


Something Wicked and Wonderful

by sanhedrin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcoholism, Andromeda ships and shags more people than i wants to tags, Black Family Drama (Harry Potter), Black Family-centric (Harry Potter), Consensual Sex, Existential Angst, F/F, Femslash, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, Original Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, Pre-Canon, Pre-Hogwarts, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Purebloods (Harry Potter), Sexual Tension, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, The ships are correct I mean them exactly, androtrix, baby girl is hella confused, bellamione compatible, black sisters, burning at both ends, canon compatible, character sketch, everyone is gray just like real life, everyone is problematic just like real life, platonic? what's platonic?, sadboi andromeda, shards of nuance, that girl is a problem, underage only applies to first seven chapters, we got here all the way from bellamione
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:17:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23876545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanhedrin/pseuds/sanhedrin
Summary: Bellatrix wanted to be a dark witch, and she got what she wanted. Andromeda was a dark witch from the beginning and spent her entire life trying to undo it.
Relationships: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks, Bellatrix Black Lestrange & Andromeda Black Tonks, Bellatrix Black Lestrange & Narcissa Black Malfoy & Andromeda Black Tonks, Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Andromeda Black Tonks
Comments: 34
Kudos: 21





	1. The Elf Incident

**Author's Note:**

> [[I've made some edits to chapter 1 as of Dec 6, 2020.]]
> 
> If you a) ship Androtrix, b) fancied Andromeda in Shards of Nuance, c) need to feast on some angst, or d) just need something weird to shake things up - this story is for you :)
> 
> Re ship tags: yes, I ship Bellatrix and Andromeda, but also I stand firm with Andromeda/Ted. Relationships are complicated, and that's what makes them exciting. I am often of the opinion that the platonic/romantic/erotic are not so easily separated even when we experience them as such. Herein this opinion lies this here tale.
> 
> If you're not into baby Andy and baby Bella, you can skip to chapter 5 for very teenaged Andy/Bella. If that's still not your jam, I recommend chapter 8 and on. I personally like the later chapters better, but I think the beginning is important for the ending.
> 
> In later chapters, there are very short excerpts adapted from Shards of Nuance because those events in SON are memories of the past – which is this story. The excerpts will be in italicized blocks unless they have been changed significantly. If they are changed, it's because memory is a lying bitch and not even the Black sisters escape its manipulation.
> 
> ALL THIS TO SAY: If you are here and you 1) have read SON, cool, cheers and carry on, 2) haven't read SON, stop, go read SON, and come back here after – but also you do you and don't let me tell you what to do.
> 
> FYI, I almost abandoned this project, but Androtrix shippers need a little more love so I've returned with a small supply.
> 
> Thanks for stopping by.

"Tell me the story again - the one I don't believe in."

"Which one?"

"About the Black sisters."

An unavoidable snort comes out. "…Which one?" This earns the potential storyteller an unamused glare from the woman across from him. "About Andromeda?"

"Well, it's about all of them."

"But you're asking about it because of Andromeda."

"Not necessarily."

The storyteller rolls his eyes. "You asked me to meet up across the street from the only church in this part of town – an ancient boarded up eyesore with "St. Andrea's Catholic Church" still visible above the front doors, and you want to tell me you're not just trying to hear about Andromeda again?"

The slim shadow from the dilapidated church's steeple falls over the street and both sidewalks, across the table between them, darkens the thick grass, and rests its tiny point at the base of the water fountain. The water fountain is not running. There is no one else and no closer sound than small chatter from an outdoor dining space on the other side of the park.

"Why does it matter?"

The storyteller's shoulders rise and fall with a big sigh. He closes his eyes for a long moment. When he opens them, they have lit up – grey-blue that could be sparkling with stars if one felt romantic about it.

"Where do you want me to start?"

"At the beginning." The asker leans forward on her elbows and then thinks better of it, returning her hands to her lap and her back to the seatback.

"And how far do you want me to go?"

"As far as it makes sense."

"What parts are most important to you?"

A pause filled with distant clinking glasses and a grand toast while the asker tries to decide what she wants. "It's all important. You choose."

The storyteller smiles widely, and his eyes sparkle again. "You're right – it is all important."

** ** **  
** ** **  
** ** **

In the courtyard, a very young, tiny Andromeda Black, her brow furrowed in concentration, was reaching delicately toward one of the newborn peacocks. She was also trying desperately to ignore her older sister skipping circles around her and throwing pebbles at the hatchling every time it almost let her touch its crest feathers. The older girl chanted in a singsong voice that was already annoying, even if it wasn’t yet the evil affront it would become later in life.

>   
>  _“There was a little girl  
>  Who had a little curl  
>  Right in the middle of her forehead.” _

Bellatrix tugged hard on a lock of Andromeda’s auburn waves that had fallen over her face and giggled at her frustrated whine (“stop!”).

>   
>  _“When she was good,  
>  She was **very, very** good,” _

The older girl tossed her own black curls and leaned in with a sycophantic whisper in the other’s ear.

>   
>  _“But when she was bad, she was horrid!”_

Unbidden flames spilled from the smaller girl’s fingertips and reduced the peacock to a pile of ash in seconds. Bellatrix gave her little sister a taunting grin while the latter screwed up her face as if experiencing all the horror in the world.

“Andy! Bad girl!” _Playful derision._

“I didn’t mean to!” Andromeda cried. _Earnest denial._

“Uh huh. Tell that to Mother.” _Leverage._

“Please don’t tell her, Bella! Please.” _Desperation._

“What’ll you give me if I don’t?” _Their grand, grand wickedness._

Bellatrix spent most of their early childhood pestering Andromeda about her unstable magic and gleefully tattling on her – that is, until the elf incident.

**

“The brightest star in my sky.” Cygnus patted his oldest daughter’s shoulder in an awkward but genuine display of affection.

Bellatrix, not a week away from turning 11, smiled hungrily at the mix of green sparks and smoke dissolving the statue in front of her. She mussed her tumbling curls with one hand and cast the spell again, but this time at her little sister, whom she knew was peeking around the open door. A yelp followed by a foul word that a child that young should not have known earned her an immense amount of immediate satisfaction. She smiled and raised the old family wand again, but her father caught her hand mid-air and slid the wand from her fingers on his way to the door.

“Andromeda!” He pushed the door open to reveal a child almost the mirror of his oldest daughter; only her softly shining auburn hair and impenetrable auburn eyes differentiated them. Barely a year and a half younger than Bellatrix, Andromeda was a much greater challenge. He was glad she wouldn’t be going to Hogwarts for another two years since time was proving necessary to help her adjust to herself and her magic; he couldn’t afford her unpredictability embarrassing the family. At that moment, however, she looked positively innocuous while sucking a rising burn on her pinky and glowering at her older sister. 

“I thought you didn’t want to join our lesson today.” He was not quite disapproving and not quite welcoming to the small child.

“It looks fun now.” Her eyes always betrayed the depth of her thought, even at that age. She did not yet have the language to call something both tempting and terrifying, but she was already well-acquainted with the feeling.

“It is fun, Andy. But you said you didn’t wanna play.” Bellatrix’ eyes – mocking from the day she was born – flashed at her sister.

Cygnus opened his stance to throw a glance back at his eldest daughter. “We’re not playing, Bellatrix. We’re practicing.”

She shrugged and shook bothersome curls from her face. “Feels like playing.”

“I wanna play!” A much smaller girl, almost platinum blonde, too young to know anything heavy, too young to carry burdens, and too young to hide anything, rounded the corner to join the others crowding the doorway. Her eyes slid over her eldest sister and her father and came to rest on Andromeda’s red, blistering hand. “Andy! Ouch!” She pointed at it.

“It’s not so bad,” came the girl’s quiet response.

Cygnus knelt on one knee and put one arm around his youngest daughter. “Narcissa, I do have a game for you.”

Her blue eyes widened, first in delight and then again in concern as she turned toward Andromeda. “But Andy’s hurt.”

“Yes, and you can fix it.”

“I can?” She questioned and let her father wrap her palm over her sister’s angry wound and rest his own over both. He whispered a quiet episkey in her ear and let her repeat it. A warm, liquid feeling spread from his palm around and through hers to coat her sister’s skin. She felt the damaged skin curl itself back to normal underneath her hand. 

That was the first time Narcissa registered her middle sister’s pain and relief. It was also the first time Andromeda had the thought that she wanted to do that – what had just been done for her – instead of fight, like her father and older sister were always asking her to do. But it was not the first time that Bellatrix, who had drawn nearer to the trio, cycled through innocent interest and distinctly un-innocent amusement. The middle Black sister let her eyes dart between the other three, wild with a burgeoning, though not yet sharp, awareness of something significant.

Cygnus’s voice had a hopeful note when he said, “Andromeda, I do hope you’ll join us for practice tomorrow.”

**

It turned out that Andromeda was terrible at dueling spells, and while Cygnus had heretofore prided himself on his patience, many a lesson ended with him throwing his middle daughter out of the room and trying to repair an item or part of the building he had no idea how to repair. It wasn’t that she had no skill, and it wasn’t that she had no power. Even as arrogant as he was, he already suspected her magic was going to eclipse his own. No, it wasn’t that she didn’t have power; it was that she couldn’t control it – not even half as well as Bellatrix or even baby Narcissa. Still, there was time to learn, and surely he would be able to train her at least well enough for damage control. He never considered that he might not have enough mastery over the family magic to do so.

To the end of equipping his children to master the other purebloods – which he was convinced was one of his main roles as head of the House of Black - right up until the last day before Bellatrix left for her first year at Hogwarts, Cygnus was trying to fit in a last few lessons to make sure she went in holding a significant magical edge on the other students. Recent days had been spent with the great fanfare of parading through Diagon Alley for unnecessary school shopping. Mostly, it was Druella who took Bellatrix and Andromeda (the two were inseparable these days) on these errands, but Cygnus insisted on making the visit to Ollivander’s new shop himself. 

It was a short trip. While a young, demurring Ollivander paid careful attention to the Black family heir, half a dozen wands of varying shapes, lengths, and components leapt off the shelves at Andromeda, pelting her in the face, chest, and arms. The auburn-haired girl burst into sobs that grew louder when Cygnus heaved her behind him and snapped at the flustered young man to hurry. His subsequent business stop at Borgin & Burke’s was thwarted when Andromeda’s inconsolable tears caused the ceiling to sprout a torrential leak and Borgin himself emerged from the back to threaten him to get his daughter out of the store. Without a word, Bellatrix gave her father a pat on the arm, took her sister’s hand, and led her out of the building to rest against its stone outside wall. Cygnus found them there when his business was done, Andromeda’s arms flung around Bellatrix’ neck and her face buried in her hair, his oldest daughter murmuring soft words while she held her. His surprise at their tenderness was one of the purest feelings of his life, but the experience was fleeting and totally disappeared by the time they returned to the Manor.

That day's lesson was a disaster. Bellatrix did well enough, as expected; the bent, gnarled wand with a kelpie hair core seemed to indeed match her well. Her natural skill fine-tuned itself almost instantly and stoked Cygnus’ lust for vicarious greatness. Andromeda, on the other hand, required almost all his attention and energy with an unprecedented display of volatile magic that almost certainly had been provoked by the events of the day.

He gave her the family practice wand (the one he’d learned on before he went to Hogwarts himself) and she let loose without warning. There were dueling spells; there were water spells; there were fire spells - all cast with children’s words: “burn,” “waterfall,” “lightning,” “broken.” Then there were spells from guttural sounds. Then there were wordless spells. Bellatrix was absolutely delighted, her eyes shining fervently while she laughed and clapped and eventually dove into the fray of magic to practice dodging. When telltale green arcs began sprouting from his middle daughter’s wand, Cygnus roared as he charged around them to stop her. Just before he reached her, the wand exploded in her hand. Splinters of wood spattered them both, and soot sprayed up her arm from the bare doxy wing core twitching in her grasp.

It happened very quickly – all in the moment he paused to gape in surprise. Andromeda threw the wand core to the ground, wound her arm up over her shoulder, and let out a screech of frustration as she whipped it forward in the direction of the portrait shelf. A crackling purple ball with gold specks zipped from her, but before it reached the portraits, a house elf appeared directly in its path to check on the commotion. The elf took the ball of magic straight in the chest, staggered backwards, and collapsed to the floor face down. Cygnus took one look at his daughter, distraught but still spurting out magic, and stupefied her for the first time. By the time he reached the elf, its eyes were rolled back in its head and a hole dripping tar was growing across its chest. He buried it in the Black family cemetery that evening.

**

Bellatrix slept in Andromeda’s room every remaining night before leaving for Hogwarts. Neither of them spoke about the accident, to Andromeda’s great relief. During the daytime, their father alternately railed at her at the top of his lungs or ignored her completely, but Bellatrix just held her in the dark, drawing shapes in the silvery-red magic that hung low over them in bed. Waking up nestled in a mess of sheets and her sister’s soft, black curls was the greatest safety she felt in those days, and the comfort between young children that Bellatrix offered her shaped her perception of herself and the world as much as her shame over the elf’s death did ever after that.

Cygnus never practiced with his middle daughter again. His wife, who was much more measured (and ruthless, if he was honest), took over and never updated him on Andromeda’s progress. Druella took her to get her wand early, in hopes that matching with a wand would help the child control her magic. Apparently, Ollivander had flinched when they entered the shop and sequestered them as far as possible away from the shelves. After a few lackluster matching attempts, Druella threatened the man at wandpoint to find a prohibited wand that she was confident he had – how she knew about it he couldn’t fathom. Andromeda left with a 14-inch beech with acromantula web core, and Ollivander was placed under a fidelius charm about it that he never did shake, even after Druella died. The wand and the lessons were fruitful, however, and by the time Bellatrix returned home for the holidays, Cygnus was not constantly fearful of his middle daughter burning the Manor down.

**

The year passed quietly. When Bellatrix returned to stir things up, she found her sisters spending long hours in the library together, matching myths and healing spells to curses and every now and then reading something relatively pornographic out loud in hushed tones - both of which amused her greatly. Andromeda apparently had offered herself to the elves in meek penance, and they now allowed her to work peaceably with them in the kitchen and the laundry as long as she kept silent. Bellatrix, perceptive despite her impetuousness, decided then that her middle sister’s unmatched desire to make things right - something that would characterize her the rest of her life - made her more extraordinary than even her magic did. 

Narcissa allowed her middle sister to disappear outside on the Manor grounds for hours at a time, but Bellatrix did not. The eldest Black sister followed Andromeda on long, meandering walks, lingering just far enough away to watch but not disturb her. Many years later, Narcissa decided this was the time when the Fates intertwined them inextricably. More than once she wished she had interrupted it.

“I can tell you’re here, you know,” said Andromeda one day as she rested her back against one of the tall yew trees and began plucking blades of grass.

Bellatrix, who was not inclined to be bashful, took this as permission to waltz into the glade and flop down next to her sister. “Well, at least I don’t have to act like I don’t want you to know I’m here anymore. That was getting hard.”

Andromeda smiled at her sister. She continued peeling apart pieces of grass and dropping them on her legs. A small twitch of Bellatrix’ wand and the corner of her mouth transformed them into tiny snakes that slithered across Andromeda’s lap. She smirked as the auburn-haired girl shrieked and flung them off her.

“Bella! Ugh!”

“They’re harmless, baby girl.”

“Yeah, right! Is that what they teach at Hogwarts?”

“No. It’s what I learn at Hogwarts.” Bellatrix flounced her shoulders and hair. She caught one of the snakes as it wriggled on the ground and held it close to Andromeda, who eyed it suspiciously. “Can you understand it?” She levelled her gaze at those auburn eyes.

The snake hissed with a vague humanity that called to the younger girl. “I can hear it, but I can’t understand it. Can you?”

Bellatrix shook her head. “I wish I could. I bet you could if you tried.”

“I don’t want to be able to speak parseltongue. It’s dark magic.”

“Not always. What about other creatures?”

“I talk to the centaurs here.”

“Everyone can talk to centaurs,” Bellatrix rolled her eyes. “And that’s as dark of magic as speaking to snakes.”

Andromeda grimaced as she watched the snake squirm wildly in her sister’s grasp. “It sounds upset, Bella. Let it go.”

“I have a better idea.” She took her sister’s hand gently – much too gently for someone who had just turned grass into _snakes_ – and placed the creature in Andromeda’s palm. “Trust me.”

Andromeda resisted the urge to throw it away first and clench her fist to end its life second. This gave her enough time to feel the snake cease writhing and quiet its frantic hissing. She blinked several times at it as it curled up and rested its head softly on her thumb.

“See? It likes you better than me. And you can trust me.”

“I don’t know about that.” But she did. That she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is responsible for Bellatrix' annoying little song.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just playing in it.**


	2. Mistress of the Houses

Bellatrix returned from her second year at Hogwarts believing she was a grown woman, and her sisters were inclined to agree with her. Andromeda was not prepared for it. There was a new difference between them that made her body seize up with something unfamiliar. Bellatrix had always intimidated her with her confidence and entitlement, but now her femininity also towered over her and crept around her throat, chest, stomach, and hips. It was volatile, unlike that of the women in Witch’s Weekly and those who attended their mother’s parties; it flashed and struck and wrapped its tendrils around Andromeda when she least expected it. Slim skirts and heeled boots accentuated Bellatrix’ new sashay, and the occasional corset ( _why corsets?_ she asked herself more than once) that pushed up her breasts was highly confusing – especially when the dark-haired witch hovered over her sisters’ shoulders while they worked on their healing and cursing spells. Bellatrix let Andromeda pretend not to notice any of it, but the middle sister had the distinct awareness of being observed in a new way. She assumed Narcissa felt similarly. Style and aesthetic had previously meant little to the younger Black sisters, but now they spent significant time trying on and practicing various aesthetic choices precisely because Bellatrix was – or rather because she wanted them to. That was what was happening the day they discovered Andromeda’s unusual relationship to the family magic.

“Stop. Let me do it.” Bellatrix slapped Andromeda’s renitent hand away and straddled the small chair her middle sister was sitting on to get sturdier access to her middle sister’s eyelashes.

“I don’t want it right now, Bella.”

“I’m almost done. It’ll look great, and then Father’s taking us to meet the Lestranges at Orion’s and Walburga’s place this afternoon.” She pursed her lips in concentration.

“Who are those people? Why are we seeing them?” Narcissa piped up. She was perched on the counter, already done up by her dark-haired sister.

“A rich pureblood family with sons Father wants us to marry,” Bellatrix said, completely unconcerned.

Andromeda didn’t feel the same way. She made a face and gestured flagrantly with raised hands in frustration. “Already? Fuck that. I don’t wanna go.”

“I told you to stop moving, Andromeda Black.” Her dark-haired sister caught both her hands, conjured a cord that secured her wrists together with a complex-looking knot, shoved them down onto her lap, and sat on them. “Besides, this is what pureblood families do. Or do you think Father’ll let us marry dirty mudbloods?”

“That’s a filthy word.” Andromeda was nearing her limit with her sister and craned her neck away.

“Baby girl, you of all people can’t tell others not to use filthy words.” The dark-haired young witch cast a muffliato and wrenched Andromeda’s face back towards her with a cupped palm so she could finish her work. When she was done, she leaned back with an unfairly attractive, appraising look. “What do you think, Cissy?”

“They’ll marry Andy off first!” Narcissa chirped.

Bellatrix released her middle sister’s bound hands, slid off her lap, and removed the muffliato. “I hope not.”

“Fuck you!” Sparks flew from Andromeda’s lips with the words. 

Bellatrix only threw her head back and laughed as a giant boil sprouted high on her temple where the sparks sizzled on her skin. “Cissy, help me out, please.”

Andromeda stormed from the room as Narcissa performed one of her self-taught healing charms on her eldest sister.

“That wasn’t very nice, Bella.” Young Narcissa had already perfected what would become her characteristic disapproving tone of voice.

Another laugh. “If there’s anyone who can handle it – who can handle me - it’s Andy. Don’t ever forget that.”

**

Bellatrix came away from that meeting engaged to Rodolphus Lestrange – whom she apparently already knew from school. Andromeda, however, left it grouchier than she began. It was her first visit to her uncle’s house, and the air began to roil with something thick almost as soon as she entered Grimmauld Place’s front door. By the time they reached the upstairs portrait hallway, the walls were bulging trying to hold back a tempest of magic, and it scared her. Purple flashes of light at the corners of her vision and a mounting dizziness were soon joined by a headache that threatened to split her down the middle. Bellatrix took one look at her, thrust her arm up under Andromeda’s, and seized her hand to keep her from keeling over as they lagged behind the others.

“Now is not the time,” she hissed in her middle sister’s ear.

“I can’t help it.” Andromeda’s whisper was desperate, and her head lolled back and forth. “What is happening?”

“We’ll deal with it later. Right now, you have to keep it together.” She clasped Andromeda upright with an arm around her waist.

“They can’t see it,” came a low, unsettling voice that arrested their attention immediately. The two sisters searched for the sound until their eyes rested on the portrait of a relatively young adult with vaguely upturned lips and a fresh wound pouring forth a steady stream of blood under their ear. “They can’t feel it. But if they could, they’d almost certainly think it was you.” The person gestured with an open hand at the dark-haired young woman.

Bellatrix leaned forward with slightly parted lips, peering intently at the person in the frame. The person’s blood seemed to be leaking through the surface of the canvas and accumulating there in a slick red sludge. “Who are you?”

“Ashlys Black. And she apparently is the master of this house.” Ashlys gestured at Andromeda now.

“Obviously.” Bellatrix stepped closer to the portrait. “What happened to you?”

“You mean, what _is_ happening to me, don’t you? Same thing that’s happening to you.” A wicked smile pumped more blood out of the wound on their neck. The purple at the edges of Andromeda’s vision dove toward the blood and danced around and through it.

Bellatrix left one arm around her sister’s waist while reaching the other out to the sticky liquid on the canvas. When she touched it, Ashlys’ pupils dilated in anticipation and Andromeda’s magic pulsed. Ashlys’ smile grew even wider when the dark-haired young witch brought her fingers up to her teeth and sucked the blood off them.

“No!” Andromeda cried out too loudly and yanked her sister’s hand down hard enough to spin her around to face her again.

Her exclamation gave them away, and Cygnus’ voice echoed at them from up the hallway. “Bellatrix! Andromeda! Stop playing in your uncle’s house!”

Bellatrix returned her attention wholly to her sister, but Ashlys arched one eyebrow and gave the middle Black sister a menacing smirk over Bellatrix’ shoulder as they continued toward the tapestry room.

Andromeda would later remember very little from the meeting. She spent the entire time concentrating on the family tree tapestry, trying to keep at bay the streams of gold, silver, and red spiraling from it and wrapping themselves around her upper body and neck. From her seat at the far end of the table, she couldn’t make out the myriad faces and names that filled the tapestry, but she could see clearly the singed fabric around gaping holes where family members should have been. That was the first time she realized that not everyone remained in the House of Black, and from that realization came permission, resentment, fear, responsibility, guilt, and longing. Later, when she ran away with Ted, she would choose to disguise all those feelings as freedom, but it would always be hard to identify exactly what she considered herself free from.

**

Andromeda’s arrival at Hogwarts could have been legendary if Dumbledore and McGonagall had not worked so hard to dampen its memory. It began before they were aware of it, and it took them almost two years to quash subsequent rumors. By that time, there were more concerning things about the middle Black sister to worry about.

Before being separated into carriages and boats for arrival to the castle, 13-year-old Bellatrix and 11 year-old Andromeda found themselves hand-in-hand before a team of thestrals while the older sister tried to calm the younger’s nerves about the sorting. They must have startled the creatures, because suddenly hooves were pawing the air inches from their wide-eyed but unflinching faces and the carriage to which they were attached upended and dumped a load of fifth-years to the ground. After the rebellious display (and before Hagrid could wade his way through milling students to control them), the thestrals folded forward on bent knees and bowed their heads before the sisters. In that still moment, with her fingers interlocked tightly with her older sister’s and creatures of death kneeling before them, Andromeda felt strangely at home.

“You weren’t even going to protect me from them, were you?” Bellatrix chided and punched her in the shoulder once the thestrals righted themselves

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “They were fucking _bowing_ to you.”

“No, no. They don’t do that to me, baby girl.”

“Enough!” Hagrid interrupted them with a grunt and whisked the middle Black sister away to the first-year boats. 

The young gamekeeper kept a suspicious eye on Andromeda as they crossed the Black Lake. It took her the entire ride to land on the question of if the lake was named after her family, and almost immediately the water rose up in a rowdy wave to sling them ashore. Its tail end washed over them, leaving them all sopping wet as they entered the castle.

The tittering excitement of a new year would become rote by the time she reached her seventh year. For now, however, it vibrated in her bones, and a cursory glance told her the other first-years felt the same ( _or were they just shivering from the wet cold?_ ). She noticed neither the thrumming of the Great Hall’s central pillars nor Dumbledore’s puzzled eyes casting about to find its source. The Headmaster said a forgettable few words about all people being equalized in the school and its community, but Professor McGonagall’s gaze fixed on the middle Black sister betrayed her doubt at the platitude - at least, this is what Bellatrix would later claim. 

When Andromeda was summoned for sorting, she approached the stool with none of the bravery she felt back with the thestrals. Despite its opening song, the hat had maintained a stoicism that grew more intimidating with each student, and by the time she lifted it to her head she was full of her characteristic dread. As soon as the hat touched her hair, it let out a loud guffaw that nearly burst her eardrums. She tried to snatch it off her head, but it clamped down and continued to chuckle.

_**Ah, yes, I heard you were here. Another Black…. Oh, how I’ve always wanted to place one of you in any house but Slytherin. What a lark that would be! What say you, Andromeda? Are you the one?** _

She didn’t answer it.

_**Uncooperative. Just like the rest of you lot. Let’s see, what house do you want to be in?** _

_I don’t care._ And she didn’t.

The hat barked out another laugh, and she winced. _**DEFINITELY not Hufflepuff then. You don’t have the loyalty. And not an ounce of the courage it takes to be a Gryffindor, I see. Your intelligence is….adequate.**_

_You’re a fucking asshole._ She couldn’t help herself.

_**Yikes. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Almost put Bellatrix in Gryffindor, you know, but she threatened to shred me to bits right in front of everyone. I believed her too.** _

_I’m not Bellatrix._

_**Yes, that is very clear. Listen, I can put you in Ravenclaw, but your father will not be pleased. But I’m not sure that matters to you, and I would enjoy it very much.** _

_I don’t give a damn what you think or do, you shitty old rag._

_**That’s more like it. Has to be this way, then…**_ “SLYTHERIN!” Its audible voice burst forth.

She ripped the hat from her head and slapped it back on the stool before stalking to the Slytherin table which was roaring with applause. Bellatrix shook her in a one-armed hug and kissed her on the cheek while Rodolphus slapped her on the back. All the cheering did little good; she was grumpy for the rest of the evening.

**

Dumbledore followed the Slytherin students as they caroused on the way to the dungeons. He was peeved when one of the stone soldiers unfurled itself without command and saluted as the auburn-haired Black sister passed. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice, but a few older students, including Bellatrix Black, gave both her and the soldier curious glances. Once the students cleared the hallway, he sternly corrected the soldier and commanded it back into place. 

McGonagall met him in his office and waited impatiently while he prepared tea by hand – something he only did when he was in earnest thought. “I wish you would have prepared us for that, Albus.”

“I’m sorry, Minerva. I didn’t expect it to be so impactful so early on.”

“You knew.”

“To some degree. But I’m afraid I underestimated her.”

A voice croaked from one of the old headmaster portraits next to the desk. “I assume you mean Andromeda?” Phineas Black gave his most self-aggrandized smile. “All the portraits are talking about her.”

“Shit.” McGonagall closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

“Shame it wasn’t Sirius, but she will do.” Phineas adjusted his robes.

“She’s going to be a problem, Albus. We have to do something.”

“We shouldn’t hold her back.” Dumbledore was still stirring his tea even though the sugar had long since dissolved.

“Call it whatever makes you feel better, but the castle won’t make it a year – much less seven – if it’s already responding this much to her.”

“I don’t think she knows how much is happening.”

“Which means she doesn’t know how to control it.”

“Then we teach her.”

McGonagall sighed in frustration. “Not everything can be solved with education, Albus.”

“But it is worth trying first. Before something more painful has to happen.”

“That girl is going to cause – and experience - an ungodly amount of pain at this rate if she can’t control that kind of magic.”

“We are going to teach her, Minerva. And I suspect you are going to be especially important for that.”

“Don’t fuck with my family, Dumbledore.” Phineas warned from his frame.

“I don’t intend to.” The headmaster’s eyes pierced them both. “But the first order of business is re-mastering the castle. Minerva, Phineas, goodnight.”

McGonagall left feeling no more at ease and tried to no avail to put it out of her mind. It lingered over her for weeks, months, until she finally became willing to see the young woman for who she was and not for her magic. Eventually, she chalked her anxiety about the middle Black sister up to her own insecurity, and that notion was never challenged until the castle nearly imploded with Andromeda’s grief the day the Battle of Hogwarts took her husband’s and daughter’s lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor baby girl.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	3. Doxy for Your Thoughts

Fortunately for everyone, the trouble Andromeda caused **her first year** at Hogwarts was limited to accidentally transfiguring most objects into doxies in McGonagall’s class, no matter how basic the lesson was. Hardly a class passed where the nasty creatures didn’t pop off her desk and zoom about the classroom and into the corridor. McGonagall took it in stride, disciplining herself to have pity on the girl who looked more and more woeful each day she stepped into the Transfiguration classroom. She changed her tack very quickly, however, the day Andromeda sullenly mitigated the doxies by smashing them into the blackboard with a flick of her middle finger, inciting screams from other first-years witnessing their tiny bodies split open on impact and drop to the ground in a pulpy mess. McGonagall gave her a week of detention in which all they did was practice capturing doxies and disposing of them humanely. To her credit, the auburn-haired girl made no complaints and worked incredibly hard to learn the lesson. It made McGonagall feel as equally guilty about being suspicious of her as she was actually suspicious.

One day, several doxies escaped into the hallway, and Andromeda, sensitive about her responsibility for the horrid creatures’ existence and newly scrupulous about controlling them, rushed out to corral them before they found other students to terrorize. McGonagall managed the remaining students (and doxies) per usual before poking her head out of the classroom to call Andromeda back. She killed the words in her throat, however, because she laid eyes on the first interaction between the Black sisters that truly worried her - and caused her to love them, if she was honest. Bellatrix and Andromeda stood close together at the end of the empty hallway with a dozen doxies suspended above their heads. Bellatrix had one hand wrapped around the back of Andromeda’s neck, the other holding the girl’s wand hand down. Their foreheads were pressed together, and the dark-haired young witch was murmuring soft consolations while her younger sister wiped away her own tears. McGonagall left them alone and paid Andromeda no mind when she returned to class. That night, a glass of firewhiskey in hand, she argued with her foreboding apprehension and decided there were some things Dumbledore didn’t need to know; intimacy wrapped in darkness ( _or was it darkness wrapped in intimacy?_ ) was one of them. 

Perhaps she should have changed her mind when, instead of capturing and neutralizing the doxies, the middle Black sister began surreptitiously flicking them at unsuspecting students, creating a steady stream of visitors to Madame Pomfrey with angry scratches and patchy eyebrows – but she didn’t. Recognizing the dark forelornness looming over the young witch, she simply cleaned up after her the rest of the year until the girl broke the habit. For her part, Andromeda didn’t think that was right for McGonagall to do, but she _did_ always feel safe with her after that. 

** 

It was unfair that Bellatrix called what she did to other students “dueling.” It was bullying. Andromeda could have told anyone that before she saw her sister in action, but by **her second year** she no longer had any ability to pretend it wasn’t. Bellatrix set fire to people’s hair, turned Ravenclaw textbooks into faux acromantulas, conjured new ghosts to scare Hufflepuffs, poured boiling molasses on Gryffindors, and even cast repeated tongue-tying then arm-tying then knee-knocking curses in succession on lone Slytherins. Throughout the year, she finessed jinxes that ripped people’s hair out, stuffed their mouths with cockroaches, and even turned genitals different bright colors that were visible through their clothes. 

That was back when Andromeda still tried to get her to stop being awful. 

_“Bella, leave them alone.” She stifled a heavy spray of what smelled like dragon piss that was soaking a group of third-years leaving Divination and received a stinging jinx in return._

_“Bella, no!” She knocked Bellatrix’ wand out of her hand as another first-year’s ears started pouring forth blood. Mushrooms sprang up on the backs of her hands._

_“Bloody shitting hell, Bella!” She pulled her sister off a Ravenclaw boy on whose face she was drawing nasty runes with blood from a prick in her thumb. She was promptly whirled around and pinned against the wall while her dark-haired sister laughed in her face and finished the blood runes on her._

Just after the winter holiday (around her birthday, in fact) of her second year, Andromeda found Bellatrix setting fire to a student’s potions essay in the hallway despite their tearful pleas. She furrowed her brow, growled in frustration, and drew her wand on her sister in front of a crowd of students. 

“Fucking stop it!” She twirled her wand, and a cavalry of icicles flew at the dark-haired witch. An invisible force slammed her sister against the wall and the icicles buried themselves in the stone on either side of her curls. 

Bullying forgotten, Bellatrix quirked her lips when she smiled at Andromeda. “That was exciting.” 

Her eyes sparkled with a rapacious mirth that made the back of middle Black sister’s neck prickle. She extracted one of the icicles from the wall and slowly advanced at Andromeda, hips swaying nonchalantly. It took all strength the younger witch had to stand her ground as Bellatrix stopped in front of her and carefully traced her jawline with the ice. Its tip left a cool trail that throbbed for hours afterwards. 

“I will stop, baby girl, _only_ if you come with me to my next duel.” 

_Goddamn it._ Andromeda had been avoiding the duels. As exciting as it was watching Bellatrix duel at school, she was certain she would not enjoy it when the stakes were higher. She had vehemently argued with her older sister and achieved a rare victory when Bellatrix agreed to let her stay away from the duels as long as she was her biggest, loudest fan at quidditch matches. Apparently, though, that wasn’t enough anymore, and Bellatrix only could be refused so much. On the school’s next Hogsmeade day, Andromeda found herself being smuggled through a tunnel out of the castle into a godforsaken structure Rod told her was called the Shrieking Shack. 

“Why’s it called that?” She asked, shivering in wind unabated by the rickety wood doing a poor job of boarding up the windows. 

Rod shrugged and took a long draw from a pipe he’d apparently won in a bet on Bellatrix’ last duel. “Duels, torture, sex. Sex during duels. Torture during sex. You name it.” 

She closed her eyes and forced herself to shudder with a moral disgust her body didn’t actually feel. When she opened them again, Rod was calmly puffing velvet, blue smoke rings. “You look ridiculous, by the way.” 

“Some people are into it.” He winked at her. 

The duel itself was very short, but Andromeda felt lost in it for hours. Bellatrix was much better than she had assumed; her sister’s grandstanding did not appear unfounded. The poor chap she had dragged in from the pub was performing at maximum capacity from the outset while she merely danced around him. Rod and Rabastan clapped and jeered, but Andromeda was paralyzed with bewilderment. It was just so much to take in. Her mind spun when Bellatrix did; her breath severed when Bellatrix cut the man’s spells in half mid-air; her heart stopped when Bellatrix’ protego dropped jinxes dead on impact; her brain nearly split open with fear when the few spells that collided with her sister ripped open her skin. Bellatrix hiccuped laughter that was almost cute when she foiled the man’s dilatory moves, and her laughter trilled beautifully when she twirled her wand with intentional showmanship. It also spiked maniacally with the sound the man's skin made when it snapped open under a nasty jinx, and that made her auburn-haired sister shiver unpleasantly. After she disposed of the man with a simple immobulis, the boys leapt off their perches to give her hardy high fives and slaps on the back. 

Bellatrix strode to her sister and threw her arms around her neck. “Andy! It’s so much better with you here.” Her face was flush with delight - something that looked positively dashing on her. 

Andromeda pushed her back gently so she could inspect the laceration on her shoulder. “We need to go back to the castle. You need to see Pomfrey.” 

“Nonsense.” Bellatrix waved her hand dismissively. “I’m going to cover it up with my robes, go get a drink, and then you are going to heal it back in the dorms.” 

“But it’s bad, Bella. You’re losing kinda a lot of blood.” 

“That firewhiskey will taste all the better then!” Rod threw a comradely arm around his betrothed. 

“And speaking of you healing. Can you clean this guy up and send him home?” Bellatrix gestured at the man unmoving on the floor. 

“I don’t – I don’t know how, what to do.” Andromeda stuttered. 

“Sorry, that wasn’t actually a question. Andy, clean this guy up and send him home. I’ll see you back in the dorms.” 

The three friends sauntered out of the shack, leaving Andromeda with a very injured, full-grown man and next to zero formal healing training. She committed herself to the task, though, and did what she thought was a relatively good job considering the circumstances. A dislocated shoulder was reset after a couple of gruesome tries, two broken fingers sufficiently splinted, several burns disappearing slowly, one laceration closed entirely, and one macerated wound patched well enough to travel. No amount of care could unbruise the man’s ego, however, and a mere girl tending to him while he was immobilized only made him more brash when she removed the spell. 

“You should go to St. Mungo’s.” Andromeda watched him struggle to his feet. 

“To hell with St. Mungo’s. I’m going to the aurors.” 

“I doubt that.” Her confidence peaked uncharacteristically. “You agreed to the duel. There’s no grounds for a legitimate complaint.” 

“They need to know she’s out here doing this. She’s a monster.” 

“If you tell them, they’ll know you voluntarily dueled an underage witch – which is illegal – and _you lost to her_.” She felt herself smile her very first wicked smile, which she erroneously decided to blame on her older sister. “Go to St. Mungo’s. Then go home.” 

Back at the castle, Andromeda worried over a very tipsy Bellatrix’ gaping laceration. It had gotten worse while carousing in Hogsmeade, and multiple times she got up to call for Madam Pomfrey. Bellatrix seized her arm each time and pulled her roughly back down to the bed where all her tools and texts on healing were spread. 

“You can do it. I want you to do it." 

“It’s getting worse. I’m stressed about it.” 

“Then buck up and get better at it faster.” 

“There are better options than me.” 

“No, there aren’t. I told you what I want.” 

“What you want isn’t always what’s best.” 

That was very funny to the eldest Black sister, and she pitched forward to laugh on Andromeda’s shoulder. “Andy, you think I’m going to give up, but I’m not. I already locked Bulstrode out of the room, and I’m willing to wait all night for you to get your shit together and fix me. In fact, I’m gonna settle in with bottle of firewhiskey.” 

She summoned the bottle hidden under her bed but before she could snatch it out of the air, Andromeda batted it down with her hand. It crashed to the floor and shattered. The liquor smell splashed up onto them and all over the room. 

“ _Merlin_ , you’re testy.” Bellatrix put on a melodramatic, wounded face. 

“And you’re the worst. Stop fucking moving and let me work.” 

Afterwards, Andromeda knew she did a damn good job. She was privately grateful to her sister for forcing the issue, but she kept that to herself because she knew it would just feed Bellatrix’ ego. The day’s events would later come to anchor her belief in her ability to do what she thought was good – even when everything about and around her battered that belief – and she would never be able to explain to anyone why Bellatrix, the most infamous and feared dark witch of their age, was to thank for it. 

** 

“There aren’t as many mudbloods in Andy’s year as there are in mine.” Bellatrix looked pointedly at her middle sister. Andromeda only narrowed her eyes back at her. “She must have scared them all off.” 

Cygnus was waxing ugly and eloquent about the recent influx of muggleborns into Wizarding Britain, just like he had been all summer. It was nauseating to watch, hear, and feel, and Andromeda was increasingly plagued by magic that sizzled out from her – sometimes from her hair, sometimes from her fingernails, sometimes from her eyelashes (that latter of which was especially annoying) – to soak the walls in violent, unhappy colors when her father monologued at length. She was looking forward to returning to Hogwarts to be rid of him, his rants, and the Manor. She was pretty sure Bellatrix didn’t share his sentiments, so she wasn’t quite sure why she egged him on – other than the fact that she was willing to instigate anything horrible these days

“That’s the strategy for now, until we get the Wizengamot to institute employment eligibility policies based on blood status.” Cygnus mused at the papers on his desk. “Fortunately, we finally got Dumbledore to hire an acceptable Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Karkaroff’s got the mettle to start weeding out mudbloods from their betters.” 

11-year-old Narcissa was laying on the floor with a book resting open on her chest. “What is their blood like? Is it a different color?” 

“Yes, it’s puke green and brown.” Bellatrix sneered at her littlest sister. 

Andromeda rolled her eyes. “No, it’s not, Cissy. She’s pulling your leg. It’s the same as the rest of us. And she knows; she spills enough blood at school from purebloods and muggleborns alike.” 

“I’m not sure I like your tone.” Her father raised disapproving eyes at his middle child without moving his head. “But Bellatrix, I have been hearing lots about your antics at school.” 

The dark-haired young woman tossed her hair. “Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry.” 

“The Abbots in particular are displeased with how you treat their son.” 

“He’s a prick. He’s only mad because I gave him blue balls…. Literally. It’s a good spell." 

Andromeda snorted into her cup of tea and refused to look at her older sister because she knew she was leering at her. 

“Bellatrix! Your little sister!” Druella entered the room and hexed bats at her eldest daughter with a small, proud smile. “But on that note, I’m also hearing rumors about you dueling in Hogsmeade.” 

“I’m _winning_ duels in Hogsmeade, Mother. Relax.” 

“I’m not worried about you.” Their mother’s smile became a grin. “But maybe you could devote more time to teaching your skills to this one.” She jerked her hand at Andromeda. 

“She could stand to learn many things, it seems,” Cygnus said coldly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	4. The Karkaroff Incident

The first day of her **third year** at Hogwarts, Andromeda timidly asked Dumbledore to enroll her last minute in a Muggle Studies elective. His brief objection that it was already full was severed with the young witch’s quiet, desperate, and embarrassed “Please!” When she begged him through nervous breaths to not tell her parents, he agreed and sent word to the necessary professors about the matter. His heart was proud and heavy.

Muggle Studies with Professor Jillings was, unfortunately, an incredibly boring class consisting only of fusty lecture, essay assignments, and hundreds of pages of reading that were made unbearable by the magic that ticked the back of her throat and under her fingernails while she tried to pay attention. Andromeda only learned anything because she threw herself into long hours of studying, and when she couldn’t bear it anymore, she summoned the courage to ask the Hufflepuff muggleborns for help understanding and processing the information. They were initially skeptical of the young witch from the most infamous pureblood family, but once they accepted her genuine interest they put as much effort into her as she put into learning. They mercifully kept quiet about it, silently acknowledging the precarious position it put her in. 

Her Muggle Studies class directly preceded Defense against the Dark Arts on Mondays and Wednesdays, which it turned out she hated. Karkaroff was indeed a thinly-veiled pureblood supremacist, and she wondered how exactly her father and others had convinced Dumbledore to hire him. The man abandoned the practice of teaching new spells in controlled exercises and instead taught them how to formally duel right off the bat and added in new spells throughout the year. Andromeda, already afraid of and burdened by her magic at that point, left each class exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

Karkaroff pressed her in a way that he did not press the others. The first day of class, his eyes had widened with curiosity when her magic had funneled vigorously from the floor around her in the first practice duel. Ever after that, he watched her like a wolf, prowling around to observe her every angle. He used her for demonstrations, pushed her to add more ruthless edges to her spells, and berated her for every unpolished spell she released. His relentless, critical feedback to her shocked even the rest of the Slytherin and Gryffindor third-years, and about halfway through the year she began to garner looks of pity from all of them when she plodded hesitantly to the front of the room when called.

She developed a habit of being late to DADA most days. She took to retreating between periods into one of the windows in the corner of the hallway that connected her DADA and Muggle Studies classrooms. Each day, she either told herself that it would be last time she avoided Karkaroff’s class or that it would be the last time she went to it. Karkaroff took 10 points away from Slytherin every time she shuffled in reeling from her internal conflict and called her to the front of the room to demonstrate a new spell before she even had a chance to sit, which she thought was rather poor teaching since her dueling success still only came from force of magic and not in the slightest from skill or good technique.

It was Bellatrix who had the dueling skill, form, and technique. It was also Bellatrix who had daring, a libidinous bent, powerful seduction, and the gumption to use it however she wanted. So when Hogwarts decided to host an especially extravagant ball to replace the festivities that would have accompanied the Tri-Wizard Tournament had it not been cancelled, it was not surprising that Bellatrix used it to exercise every wile and power she possessed at the time. It took Andromeda a long time to realize that one of Bellatrix’ favorite powers was that which she held over her.

It wasn’t like Bellatrix hadn’t always had a certain sway over her, but this was when it developed its profoundly unsettling flavor. The first time she felt it was when her sister conscripted her into getting her ready for the Halloween ball. It was unclear to the middle Black sister why she acquiesced to her so easily: surely the acclaimed duelist, the brightest witch of their age, could get ready by herself. Still, Andromeda found herself zipping up a slim deep blue dress, taming wild curls, modifying the height of new heels, and putting glamour charms over scratches acquired in a recent duel.

Andromeda held out her hand with an array of makeup items. “Here. I think it’s everything you wanted.”

Bellatrix sorted through the pieces in her sister’s hand without picking anything up. “Almost everything.”

“What did I miss?”

“I want you to do it for me.”

The auburn-haired young witch rolled her eyes and slapped the items on the dresser. “I’m late for a study group.” She turned to leave but her sister stopped her with a hand wrapped around her upper arm and spun her back around.

“Andy, please help me,” Bellatrix pouted, and Andromeda forgot why she had been so adamant about leaving.

“Fine.”

Bellatrix smiled something wicked. She handed her sister the foundation. Andromeda took it with a petulant look and pushed her dark and dashing sister into the chair. “I’ll make sure it’s awful if you are troublesome.”

Bellatrix was unusually compliant, and Andromeda had the thought that she was being given a rare glimpse into her sister’s softness – though, in retrospect, it was probably manipulative. When she told Bellatrix to move, she did; when she told her to stop moving, she stopped. Andromeda relished feeling in control for once until her stomach coiled with a new sensation that was both unwelcome and tantalizing. When she leaned in close to her sister to deal with details, she held her breath to steady herself and tried to betray nothing – because it _was_ nothing, she told herself.

Bellatrix’ eyes snapped open, devoid of her earlier gentleness. “Your hand is shaking. Stop it.” Bella made a point of scanning her face deliberately - but not with concern.

The auburn-haired young witch finished quickly, averted her eyes while her sister surveyed her resplendent self in the mirror, and busied her still trembling hands with reorganizing what was on the dresser. On her way out the door, Bellatrix threw a smile over her shoulder that Andromeda would later come to know as predatory.

“You’re such a dear, baby girl.”

**

If you’d asked Andromeda about the Finnegan boy in Fall of her third year, she would have said she thought he was probably a halfblood and had brown-ish hair and maybe a nice smile. He really meant nothing to her, and she felt no need for it to be otherwise. It was, however, it was sort of because of Finnegan that the Karkaroff incident happened.

The auburn-haired young witch was uncomfortable – if not dismayed – at the ease with which Karkaroff provoked her into dark magic. He spouted some spiel on the regular about magic not being inherently dark, but that did little to make her feel better when glittering smoke slithered along the ground from her feet toward another frightened, hapless student trying to shield or disarm the unknown spell she’d been forced to release. Even though she didn’t want to believe any word that came from the man’s mouth, his rhetoric and unfortunately apt assessments of her wormed their way into her subconscious and wove themselves deep into her self-perception.

She had just turned 14 when she almost killed her professor, and she never really figured out if she meant to or not. One Monday after classes, she accidentally stumbled upon Karkaroff vehemently berating Jillings with his wand in the man’s face. She darted behind a suit of armor, placing a hand on its back and begging it silently not to move. Through its arm, she could see Karkaroff fuming.

“If you keep my student late one more time, Jillings, we’re gonna have a real problem.”

Jillings turned his face just enough to keep Karkaroff’s wand off his chin. “I never keep students late.”

“Then why is she always late to my class?”

“I have no idea. Why don’t you ask her? She’s more than capable of speaking for herself.”

“Because it’s your fault.”

“Karkaroff, this is insane.”

“You come into this school spreading your inimical lies and propaganda, and you tell me the student with the best magic this school has seen in years comes weaker to my class after yours and it’s not your fault?”

“She’s also a damn sight better than everyone else at thinking for herself. I’m only providing her with information.”

Karkaroff grabbed Jillings by his lapel, slammed him against the wall, and spit in his face. He whispered something threatening in the man’s ear and stormed off. Jillings collected himself quickly, but Andromeda did not. She escaped to the owlery for the rest of the evening, panicking about what she’d seen and heard and wallowing in the magic that settled like a low-lying fog around her. She was not late to her next Defense against the Dark Arts class.

It was a Wednesday, and it was sleeting outside. That detail always remained irritatingly clear in her mind. She settled into a seat in the middle of the classroom and tried to look small - to no avail. Karkaroff called her gruffly to the front of the room before he even announced the agenda for the lesson. She obliged and approached yet another demise with her head down and her jaw set to control its quivering.

“We will be working on spell interruption today. Miss Black, please utilize some form of the tangible confundus charms we’ve been practicing.” He scanned the room, and Andromeda refused to look up to see the other students shrinking in their seats. “Finnegan!” He barked. “You have decent control over a protego. Come here.”

Finnegan’s voice cracked after he swallowed visibly. “It - it really isn’t that good yet, Professor.”

“Of course not, but it’s marginal for someone who’s only been attempting magic for three years. Stand over there.”

Finnegan’s trepidation made Andromeda feel guilty already. Karkaroff explained the words and wand movements he wanted the boy to use and gestured at her to begin. She met Finnegan’s eyes across the room and tried to tell him sorry without using her words.

“Confundus!”

Finnegan’s shield absorbed the spell. Karkaroff frowned. “More variation, Miss Black.”

She tried again, channeling the idea of water. “Confundus!” A boiling stream burst around the boy’s shield and splashed behind him. He yelped, but his wand did neutralize much of it.

Karkaroff’s face began to redden. “Too weak. I want to see more.”

Anger at Karkaroff and shame at her ability to do what he was asking began to foment in her. “Confundus!” A whirlwind of sparkling dust rushed at Finnegan, ripping his shield away. His wand did slow spinning, but he still blinked rapidly with its impact and went slack-jawed.

Karkaroff approached the young witch menacingly and bent down to shove his face into hers. “How many times do I have to tell you to use your goddamn magic? Do it again.”

When the man stepped away, Andromeda raised her wand at the already confused boy. “Confundus! Incendio!” A conflagration erupted in his face and knocked him to the ground. He shakily pushed himself up and belatedly, pitifully, tried to cast the spell.

“Finish the job, Black! Do you want to fucking fail my class?” Karkaroff roared.

She felt tears on her eyelashes as she let out a wordless spell. A beam of smoke erupted from her chest and rammed into Finnegan’s. The boy was lifted off his feet and he thudded violently to the ground as the smoke exploded outward through the room and left a singed circle on the walls. Andromeda rushed to kneel next to him as he rolled to his hands and knees and began to cough. She could hear her professor clapping in the background.

“Finnegan. Finn.” Her hands shook above his back as she tried to decide if she could heal him some way there on the classroom floor or if she even had the right to touch him now. “I’m sorry, Finn – “ He made a gagging sound and, to her horror, vomited a tiny, crumpled winged creature swamped in stringy blood onto the ground in front of his face.

That was what sent her crashing over her own edge. She sprang to her feet and swung her wand at Karkaroff. The man crunched into the shelves behind him; books and artefacts on display wrenched themselves through their binding wards and collapsed on him while heavy lines of purple and gold wrapped around his neck. His eyes bulged and he emitted harsh wheezing coughs before going completely silent while scratching wildly at the magic constricting his neck. Andromeda stood before him with her arm outstretched, seeing and hearing nothing except for the roaring between her ears.

Someone must have run for help because her wand flew from her into the urgent hand of her Transfiguration professor, who rushed to stand between her and the choking man with a shield already in place. Andromeda’s magic dissipated, and she felt her throat begin to narrow in her typical panic when the man remained motionless on the ground.

The middle Black sister was sent to Madam Pomfrey just to keep her sequestered for a while from the other students and ostensibly – as she heard Dumbledore whispering to McGonagall – to buffer her from her father when he visited. Karkaroff was apparently emergency-apparated to St. Mungo’s. He never returned to Hogwarts, and no one heard anything but rumors about him after that. Finnegan was discharged from the hospital wing after a few days, but Andromeda took her meals and schoolwork there for the better part of two weeks. Her sisters visited her nightly and mostly allowed her the mercy of silence while they busied themselves with their own tasks. When she finally returned to the dorms and her classes, she received a mixed reception. There were as many students who gave her friendly smiles or sent her small gifts as did give her a wide, terrified berth. Their responses had little consistency. There were purebloods who praised her force against Finnegan and purebloods who derided her actions against Karkaroff; there were muggleborns who despised her for hurting the Gryffindor boy and muggleborns who championed her for her compassion and fervor for avenging him. And there were plenty, of course, who held multiple contradictory opinions about her. It was better not to ingratiate herself to any of them. McGonagall graded her generously for the rest of the year, and the new Charms professor put extra effort into fine-tuning her enchantments and delivering unobtrusive praise. And, somehow, it was Bellatrix who provoked her back into normalcy.

**

The end of the year had everyone antsy, so when the sun finally promised to stay out for a time, hardly a soul remained inside. That was how Andromeda found herself laying in the speckled sand on Black Lake’s beach next to her older sister, who was becoming less and less clad by the minute. They were watching water well up from under the castle and send gentle ripples to lap at their toes.

“I wanna know where all that water comes from.” Bellatrix kicked damp sand into the air. It spattered Andromeda’s face and stuck to her teeth so that she had to spit and wipe her mouth multiple times to get most of it off.

“Fuckin –“

Bellatrix overrode her sister’s cursing with a giggle. “The Greatest of the Black Sisters! Overwhelmed by a spat of deadly sand!”

Andromeda scowled at her. “For a moment there I thought you were going to say something important.”

“Everything I say is important.” Bellatrix crossed her arms behind her head and returned her attention to the lake. “That’s a shit ton of water to be just coming from the castle.”

“I reckon we all use a lot. And who knows how much the building itself uses or creates.”

“The only time buildings create water is when you’re around.” Andromeda frowned at the flippant comment, but she had no real argument to deliver. “No, it’s coming from somewhere underground, and wherever that is there’s something wicked and wonderful, and I want it.”

“I’m sure we’re better off not knowing.”

Bellatrix turned to appraise her middle sister and stayed conspicuously silent. Andromeda returned the look as long as she could stand it before shifting back to the sun rippling on the water. Bellatrix made her feel very exposed these days, and she couldn’t tell whether it was a good feeling or not.

“Andy, whatever wild, wicked, wonderful thing is in there is worth knowing – and experiencing.”

Andromeda wrinkled saturated sand with her toes. “You’ve become very poetic recently.”

“And you’re becoming more obstinate.”

The middle Black sister did not answer for a while. Obstinate, stubborn, steeled, inflexible, hardheaded – these words were coming at her from every direction. Hardly anyone, save Narcissa (bless her), didn’t voice an opinion on her these days. She mostly blew them off. The opinions of people who hadn’t accidentally killed a family elf and almost killed a professor mattered little to her.

“I’m figuring out how to control my shit, Bella. Don’t hold it against me.”

Bellatrix sighed. “I know it’s a lot, and I know nothing I say ever helps.” Andromeda hoped her sister didn’t actually believe that and almost challenged it before the dark-haired young woman continued. “But you’re not actually the only one who has to figure out how to deal with weird shit inside them.”

“McGonagall said it might be the family magic.” She had overheard their young transfiguration teacher discussing her with the new Charms professor who was still trying his damndest to get Andromeda to channel her magic into something constructive.

“Of course it’s the family magic. Well, partly. That’s just the card we drew being born into the family. And that’s why you should know you’re not the only one.”

Andromeda pursed her lips in a gentle frustration. “But you’re so controlled.”

“I’m batshit crazy. So they say.”

“Come off it.” Andromeda rolled her eyes, but her sassiness was tinged with desperation. “You own your magic; it listens to you. You don’t hate it. You don’t hang on for dear life when it comes out. It doesn’t do things that ruin you. Mine does. It’s not the same. We’re not the same.”

Bellatrix rolled on her side, propped her head up with one hand and drew in the sand with the other. Her voice was quiet. “I know you hate it, but your magic isn’t bad. It’s not dark. You get to choose what it will be.”

“I’m trying, ok. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Andy, your magic is… beautiful. It makes me sad when you think otherwise.”

A lump caught in the back of Andromeda’s throat as she felt her sister’s eyes as hot as the sun on her cheek. She swallowed forcibly. “And what have you chosen to do with your own magic, dear sister?”

“Compromise with it. Made a deal. That favors me.”

Her sister’s answer drew a harsh laugh from her lips. “So you’re choosing to be a bad person.”

“It’s working for me, isn’t it?”

Andromeda couldn’t deny that, and when she turned to look at the dark-haired witch again, Bellatrix was taking off another layer so that she lay on her blackest robes spread out over the sand, down to just her bra on top.

“It’s so fucking hot out. Isn’t this unusual for May? Also, you’re the muggle aficionado – what are those things they put on their eyes to block out the sun? Sun goggles?”

Andromeda snorted. “Sunglasses. Interested in muggle things these days, are you?”

Bellatrix slapped her hand over her eyes. “No, I just want my goddamn sister to have some mercy on me and conjure me something to keep my retinas from burning out.”

“Retinas, huh?” Andromeda’s gaze lingered on her sister, emboldened by Bellatrix’ eyes closed and covered.

“I’m not an idiot about muggle things, you know.” She threw a handful of sand up in the air again, but this time Andromeda was ready enough to protect herself by suspending it mid-air and forethinking enough to leave it there.

The auburn-haired witch continued to watch her sister breathe, her stomach rising and falling delicately. Her pale skin dazzled in the sunlight, and the curves of her hips punctuated Andromeda’s view of the castle – or, rather, if she had been looking at the castle, they would have. Instead, she was looking at those black curls lifting in the breeze, brushing across Bellatrix’ cheeks and lips. She whipped her head away when she saw Bellatrix raise herself up, praying to the Fates that her sister hadn’t noticed and refusing to address why she was begging them.

This day – not any of the godforsaken days before – was the day the middle Black sister knew the Fates were not on her side, because Bellatrix rolled over to face her again and quirked her lips deviously. “Whatcha thinking about, baby girl?”

“I – I’m thinking about how sunburned you’re going to be in not that long.” Andromeda stammered. _Goddamn it._

“Mmhmm.” Bellatrix kicked water up at her, so Andromeda retaliated by dropping the suspended sand back down her her. The dark-haired witch only laughed gleefully. “Don’t worry. You may have heard that I have two sisters who are extraordinarily gifted in healing, and if the older one won’t help, the younger one will. So, thank you so much for your concern, but I’m all right.”

“The older one absolutely won’t help you.”

There was a blur of black hair, sand, and a spinning bluebird sky, and then she was underwater, clothes, wand, and all. When she came up, gasping for air, her sister was knee-deep in the water, laughing hysterically, her charcoal-pool-eyes dancing. Andromeda lifted her arm behind her, running her fingertips along the wall of water rising over her until a curling wave blocked out the sun. Bellatrix continued to smile, raised her eyes to the top of the wall of water and settled them back on her with the purest delight Andromeda had yet seen grace her sister’s face. She let the water crash down over them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of this chapter is adapted from one of Andromeda's memories in chapter 18 of Shards of Nuance. (citing myself)
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	5. High Stakes Games

The summer between Andromeda’s third and fourth years at Hogwarts was full of Bellatrix’ strutting, young Narcissa’s newly developed habit of chastising like their mother, and her parents’ increasing vitriol against muggles. It took a toll on the auburn-haired young woman that she felt but did not perceive the extent of. Hogwarts, once a castle whose magic she did not trust, began to seem like a haven safe from the worst of her malformed, pureblooded legacy. She was on the receiving end of her first unforgivable curse that summer. She committed her first as well.

The former was an unassuming day in early July, when the sisters were out in the garden trying to teach themselves to cast patronus charms. Their mother swept through with an equally self-righteous and malevolent fury, seized Andromeda by the collar of her robes, and dragged her to her room where her muggle clothing was strewn about on the floor. The young woman shook at the end of her mother’s spitting rage and watched the clothing and a handful of fresh letters from her muggleborn Hufflepuff friends go up in flames. Her sisters peered through the crack in the doorway until their mother cast the first crucio which made Bellatrix stumble into a sprint to the owlery to send harshly worded letters to the Hufflepuffs. She returned to find their parents storming away from the room and Narcissa re-enervating Andromeda on the floor.

Not long after, Andromeda procured a new set of slim muggle jeans and a black button up shirt that she kept remarkably (so thought her sisters) unbuttoned and wore them every hour she was certain their parents were absent, on principle. She resumed her long meanderings through the Manor grounds which meant Bellatrix took to prowling after her again until the auburn-haired young witch inevitably called her out. They spent hours dallying in the forest, transfiguring wood crickets into wasps or mice - or one time, Andromeda managed a tiny dragon that Bellatrix pocketed and harbored for many months. Otherwise, Andromeda brooded, Bellatrix tried to enliven her, and Narcissa tiptoed carefully around them.

Once, during the last week before returning to school, all three sisters ventured out into the forest to savor the good weather together. Narcissa trailed behind Bellatrix, who walked closely behind Andromeda – close enough that she had to put out a hand to keep herself from running into her when the middle sister stopped abruptly.

Bellatrix peered over her sister’s shoulder. “What is it?” she whispered.

“Shh.” Andromeda was uncharacteristically steady, not wavering with her sister’s hand lingering softly on her lower back. She drew her wand and let it dangle loosely at her side. 

“What do you see?” Bellatrix prodded. Narcissa had the unsavory feeling that comes before one knows cerebrally that darkness is coming.

Andromeda did not answer and rolled her wand in her fingers. A centaur emerged carefully from the trees ahead of them. He wore a gold talisman around his stately neck and was utterly unconcerned with their presence. 

He inclined his head gracefully toward them. “Andromeda.”

“Petros.” The auburn-haired young witch replied, but Bellatrix only eyed her sister’s thumb rolling the beech back and forth against her fingers

“Something haunts you, youngling.” The centaur turned a concerned eye at her.

The wand continued to roll, and Bellatrix pressed the pads of her fingers more firmly into Andromeda’s lower back. She meant to whisper a warning, but before she could, the other girl’s wand flashed up. A very small but firm “Imperius” passed through her lips. Bellatrix felt something sucked from behind her through her spine and belly toward her sister while the green arc of light was guided to its target by streams of purple and yellow. All three arcs hit the centaur directly in his chest, and his eyes glazed over with a translucent milkiness.

“Andy…” Bellatrix whispered, unsure whether she was uneasy or in awe.

The auburn-haired young woman tilted her chin slightly and her eyes darkened. “Dance, centaur.” At the flick of her wand, all four of Petros’ legs kicked up and began to twist in a troubled jig. “Up,” and he reared up on his back legs; “Down,” and his hooves slammed back on the ground; “Bow,” and he dropped to knees; “More,” and his face groveled in the dirt. “Give me your talisman.” Petros obediently removed the chain from around his neck and dropped it into her outstretched hand.

Narcissa’s mounting discomfort broke shrill through the barriers she was trying to erect around it. “Stop it!”

The middle sister’s face registered nothing, but she commanded the centaur to stand aright. She flicked her wand lazily at him, and the milkiness disappeared from his eyes. He shook his head as if clearing his vision and looked at his palms in mild confusion. Bellatrix watched her sister paint her face with generosity as she extended her hand upward.

“Petros, your talisman. You dropped it.” Andromeda gave a sickly sweet smile Bellatrix had not yet seen on her.

Petros placed his hand on his chest to grasp where the talisman should have been. Not finding it, he reached down to the young witches, took it from Andromeda’s hand, and replaced it. Still somewhat confused, and therefore not a little suspicious, he bid them good afternoon and departed the way he had come.

Bellatrix placed a hand on her sister’s arm and spun her around. Those auburn eyes were unreadable, which meant Bellatrix wasn’t yet sure how to respond. “What was that?”

“I just wanted to know that I could do it.” Andromeda pushed through Bellatrix and past Narcissa and made her way back to the Manor.

Bellatrix exhaled a laugh as if she had just discovered a treasure. “Bloody hell, that girl!” 

Narcissa was another matter, shock still gracing her young face. “I can’t believe she just did that.”

“I can.” The eldest sister flourished her curls back with a whoop. 

“Don’t you dare encourage this, Bella.”

“You don’t be a spoilsport.” 

With that, Bellatrix followed after Andromeda without paying Narcissa another mind, and while it had always been that way, that would forever be the first time Narcissa had noticed it.

**

Rod was already buried under cheap silver, but Andromeda just kept piling more trinkets onto the growing mountain in his arms. He struggled to see her over its top so instead he peered through holes in the precarious stack. She was wearing those muggle clothes she’d adopted last year – which looked quite good on her, he readily admitted – and was calf-deep in piles of old junk, raking her hands through the kitsch clattering about the floor of the Room of Requirement.

“You said you wanted the silver that rusts blue, right? Or was it purple? Or pink? You’re kind of a pink guy.” She triumphantly raised a cup that littered pink flakes.

“Honestly, Andy, I think this is enough.”

Rod was throwing another party. Or rather, Rod and Bellatrix were throwing a party, and since his dark-haired fiance had exactly zero interest in what it looked like, he was left to decorating and arranging fineries. This suited him well enough, and he was grateful that he could rely on Bellatrix to run the show and manipulate their future social and political arrangements. That was, in fact, the main reason for the parties – besides the point of getting drunk and rowdy themselves. Now, halfway through their sixth year, the pair was developing a grand reputation for merry-making, magnanimity, and debauchery. It was much work, but fortunately for Rod, it was also enjoyable to be drunk - and sober if he was honest - with Bellatrix. Most arranged pureblood betrothals weren’t so lucky. It was simply the icing on the cake that her sisters were more than tolerable – Andromeda especially. He was only beginning to hone his ability to differentiate between sexual attraction and platonic intimacy, but he was in no hurry to do so while the ambiguity presently afforded him such sweetness. Even more presently, Andromeda was wholly engaged in helping him with party preparations, and it both excited and comforted him. She did really look good in those muggle trousers.

“I thought you said you wanted to do it big.” The auburn-haired witch tossed another silver cup at him before moving to help him sort the items into piles. 

“This is big.” He gestured at the items.

“It’s hardly big.”

“Says a daughter of the House of Black. Do you ever scare your muggleborn friends with talk about your family’s extravagance?” He chided.

She made a face. “Rod, that’s not fair,” she whined, and he regretted the comment.

“Sorry. It’s just a joke. They love you, obviously.” He waved a hand at her outfit.

“No, you’re probably right. It’s just… ugh!” She grunted in frustration and ran her fingers through her hair.

He sighed. “Bell was right. You do give yourself a hard time.”

Andromeda rolled her eyes. “She’s a bitch for saying whatever she did.” She was secretly relieved about not having to explain to him for some reason, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Careful. That’s my future wife you’re talking about.” Rod winked. “But we do talk about _everything_.” 

“You’re a little flamboyant when you gossip, you know.”

He feigned shock at the barb. “Oh, horror! Who’s a bitch now? But since you brought it up… “

“Right, right. Here - ” Andromeda interrupted him and produced two dented cans of beer from a pocket of the coat she’d discarded on the floor earlier. She slapped one into his chest.

He popped it open and dramatically clinked it against hers. “A good ol’ muggle variety! I knew your friends were good for something besides dressing you.”

“Well, I think it’s pretty shit, but I wasn’t about to let you have both.”

“Rude.” He punched her in the arm playfully. She smacked him back. They laughed and prattled on about nonsense while sipping at their drinks. When she skittled away to inspect the flaky pink cup from earlier, he eyed her across kitsch, weighing his options. Finally, he picked up the courage to change the direction of the conversation. “Andy.”

“Rod.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m wondering if you could help me with something.”

“I am helping you with something.” She swept her hand across the piles. The silver sparkled briefly under her magic.

He fingered the tab on his can. “Rab thinks he can get you to have sex with him this year.”

“What?” Her jaw dropped, which was very nice looking.

“But I don’t think you’ll do it.”

“Yeah, Rab is gross.”

“True. And he’s being a prick about this. And I was thinking – don’t take this the wrong way – I was thinking it would really put him in his place if you and I, you know, if you and I….”

She looked at him in disbelief. “This is a joke, right?” He said nothing, which apparently didn’t satisfy her. “You think I’m going to have sex with you, of all people?”

“It’s just a question. I’m just asking if you’d be down.”

“You are engaged to my sister, Rod.”

“She doesn’t care. I’m not exactly her type, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know.” Rod looked at the auburn-haired young woman pointedly, but she only returned a confused stare. “There’s no way you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“Are you for real right now?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.” She took a swig from the can in her hand, and he could see her jaw quivering behind it.

“Bella doesn’t like men. She likes women. In all the ways.” Rod smiled as he watched that beautiful face work hard to process the information. “All the ways, Andy. Alllll the wayyyyyysss….”

“Ok, ok, I get it!” She threw her hand up to stop him, and he felt his tongue briefly seize up with some sort of magic. “Well, uh, that’s… interesting…. I….” She stammered while the spell on his tongue wore off.

He didn’t miss a beat once he could speak again. “The point is, she and I have an agreement. And I find you very, very attractive, and I find Rab very, very obnoxious, so it seems to me….”

“No. Absolutely not. Over my dead body.” She crumpled her empty can and chucked it at him. “No offense.”

Rod giggled after swatting the can away. “None taken. But it was worth a try. And maybe I’ll check back in later.” He winked at her. This earned him a devastating eye roll, but that pleased him well enough.

**

Andromeda sat cross-legged on her bed just before the winter holiday, bent over a Muggle Studies text, quill in one hand, the other propping up her chin. She blinked several times when she realized she remembered nothing from the last ten or so pages. The Ravenclaw muggleborns had warned her about this chapter on the religious wars of medieval Europe, but she had still underestimated its unbearable tedium. She sighed dramatically, flopped back on her pillow, and slung her arms over her face. The bed bounced with a disruption, and she moved one arm just enough to see her older sister laying on her side staring at her.

Bellatrix flipped the book closed and picked it up to look at its cover. She groaned. “Another one? Weren’t the first hundred enough?”

“Hey, you lost my page, you fucker.” Andromeda snatched the book back and flipped through pages trying to find where she left off. The problem was that she had no idea what page it was because she couldn’t remember a damn thing from the last hour of reading. “This stuff matters.”

“Sure. But it makes you boring. All this studying.”

“It’s a normal amount of studying.”

“No, it’s not. You’re obsessing. Which is fine!” Bellatrix threw up an indignant hand at the face her sister made. “I just want you to hang out with me instead right now.”

Andromeda threw her quill down and rubbed her face. “Fine. What do you want to do?”

“Mm, maybe duel?”

“No.”

“Go on a jaunt through the Forbidden Forest?”

“No.”

“Sneak out to Hogsmeade for some drinks?”

“That would be a stupid thing to get in trouble for.”

“Well then we shouldn’t get caught.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“See? Boring. What would you want to do? Lay in bed and cuddle?”

“Ew.” Andromeda wrinkled her nose, mostly to hide the pink color her ears were turning.

Bellatrix gave her dashing and not very trustworthy grin. “Worth a try.”

The comment reminded the auburn-haired witch of a conversation which had been troubling her for some weeks now. “Bella, there’s something I think you should know.”

“So serious.” 

Bellatrix’ condescending tone of voice almost changed her mind about telling her, but she pressed on. “When I was helping Rod get things ready for the party several weeks ago, he tried to…. he wanted to hook up. With me.”

Instead of anything Andromeda expected – what had she expected? – Bellatrix smiled. “Oh yeah. He told me about that. Said you blew him off.”

“He told you?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t he?”

“Wouldn’t that make you mad?”

“Not particularly.”

“You are both fucked up.” Andromeda turned her head to stare at the ceiling.

“Wow! So judgmental for someone so self-righteous about the muggleborn cause.” The dark-haired witch tutted.

“Very different.”

“Rod and Rab have a bet on you.”

“What?” Andromeda looked back at her sister in surprise.

“Well, about you.” Bellatrix waved her hand dismissively. “The first one to sleep with you before the end of the year wins 10 galleons from the other. The first without any major injuries, that is.”

Andromeda crinkled her forehead, struggling through the revelation. “Wha – why?”

Bellatrix snorted. “Have you seen yourself lately, baby girl? I think you can level up from your fourth-year boy toys.”

“Boy toys? You don’t know anything about my…. personal life,” Andromeda sputtered.

“Well, I sure hope I don’t know everything,” Bellatrix smiled lasciviously, “but I hear quite good things.”

The middle Black sister groaned and closed her eyes until she remembered yet another thing that was bothering her. “Rod also said… something….”

Bellatrix fluttered her eyes at her sister. “He does talk a lot.”

“Something about your… preferences.” Andromeda tried to ignore Bellatrix’ lips twitching in amusement.

“Are you trying to ask me a question?”

A disproportionate anxiety rose in the auburn-haired witch’s throat. “Do you…. Are you….. “

“Am I what?” Bellatrix prodded.

“You know what I’m trying to ask, Bella!”

“I wanna hear you say it.”

“Just tell me!”

Bellatrix pounced on her sister and pinned her arms to the bed, despite the younger witch’s effort to squirm away. “No, baby girl, I want to hear the words come out of your mouth.”

The wasted effort Andromeda put into escaping her older sister channeled into her desperate voice. “I don’t know, Bella! Are you attracted to women? Do you have sex with women? Is that what you like?”

Bellatrix’ low chuckle bubbled as she loosened her grip on the younger witch’s arms until her fingers slid down to loosely encircle Andromeda’s wrists. “Lots of folks call that gay, by the way. And yes, yes, and yes.”

Andromeda tried to breathe away the pounding in her chest. “You... never told me.” She wasn’t upset. She was just…. Nervous. So nervous.

“I thought you knew.” Her sister’s smirk did nothing to alleviate the feeling.

“I didn’t.”

“Well, I’m glad we had this conversation then.”

“You’re not worried… what I think?”

“I don’t think you’re upset about it, Andy.”

Bellatrix looked very confident in herself, and Andromeda supposed she had no reason to contradict her. “So, is Rod like that too… gay?”

“Every now and then.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that your fiancé is trying to hook up with me or anyone else….”

“It’s a relief, honestly. Besides, what do you think I’m doing?”

The whole conversation was overwhelming to Andromeda, and as soon as it was over, she rifled through her cabinets looking for one of those potions her mother gave her when she couldn’t sleep. She slept through the evening meal, all night, and through her first class the next morning.

**

Maybe it was the revelation about her sister. Maybe it was Narcissa’s incessant nagging about the two of them bickering and bantering. Maybe it was the way her magic haunted her dreams and loomed at the corners of her vision during the day. Maybe she was just in the throes of being a teenager bearing the full weight of an ancient family magic. Whatever it was, she became grumpy to the point of meanness that year, and her complicated reputation she had hope to remediate that year only intensified. During Transfiguration and History lessons, she thought she could almost feel the chemicals in her brain spitting and sizzling destructive poisons that crept through her body and ate away at other cells. If she received a wound in Defense Against the Dark Arts, she was pretty sure it was magic that trickled out of her instead of blood – and that was the only way she could tell the difference between DADA and her Charms class. She excelled in both, but that wouldn’t register until Dumbledore selected her for the special charms project her seventh year. She dropped to the very bottom of her class in another Muggle Studies elective; the only reason she passed was because her new Ravenclaw friends worked in overdrive to help her. A handful of times, her younger sister’s screams awoke her to find that she’d cast some spell in her sleep that transfigured furniture into an unknown creature the size of a small dog, conjured an unsavory apparition, or something else of that ilk. Bellatrix usually fixed it before she had to and spared her the mercy of not casting any worried or disapproving looks or words her way. One unexpected comfort was that her mother obliged her and asked no questions when she wrote asking for more of the extra potent sleeping potions. 

Rod and Bella threw one last party before the end of the year. They asked for her help enchanting the overhead lights to spin and cast different colors on the wall in sync with her choice of music (“isn’t that a muggle thing, Andy?”). As an afterthought, she also set the punch to burn with harmless, undying flames. This delighted them both, and Bellatrix squealed when hugging her from behind, which left her reeling in place for a few moments. It was a delicious feeling until it wasn’t, and she spent most of the evening with a scowl on her face.

That she was a favorite amongst the many students who didn’t dislike her had only just begun to dawn on her, and she still observed the phenomenon as someone watching from the outside. Though she remained rooted on the couch, drinks kept being brought to her before she could finish them, and a handful of students rotated through the empty spot next to her to giggle and flirt – yes, flirt, she was now sure – with her. At some point, Bellatrix ended her own grandstanding, kicked the Abbott girl out of that spot, and settled into it with great fanfare.

“Having a good time, baby girl?” Bellatrix’ devious smile was unfairly stunning.

“Sure,” she grumbled.

“Mm, let’s try again. Having a terrible time?”

“Hardly.” She refused to look at her older sister anymore.

Rod joined them and squeezed himself into the small space between his betrothed and the arm of the couch. “Andy, you have done a wonderful job tonight. Are doing a wonderful job sitting here like a snobbish high-class woman, tantalizing the masses.”

Bellatrix mused. “You do have a gift for that. Will be devastating someday.”

“I’m devastated right now. It’s almost the end of the year.” Rod pulled a wounded face at the auburn-haired witch.

“No chance, Rod.” Andromeda glared at him before returning her dark, unfocused stare across the room. 

Rod, normally quite in her good graces, was annoying the shit out of her lately, not with his propositioning (it was generally good-natured and respectful) but with his inconveniencing presence. Right then, for instance, he was making an already small couch unbearably cramped. Bellatrix was now pressed up against her side and had thrown her arm around her shoulders to free up a little space between them and was playing with her hair. This only made her grumpier. An irritating giggling coming from an equally crammed, nearby couch containing Rab and the seventh-year Parkinson girls grated on her ears. Zabini perched on the end, trying to get in on something he clearly wasn’t going to. She watched them with unmerited disgust, but at least their foolishness drowned out Bellatrix’ and Rod’s ongoing banter. Before she realized she had made the decision, she found herself standing and sauntering the short distance to the four fools; their conversation died out as they all turned to look at her expectantly. She didn’t hear Bellatrix whisper “double or nothing” at Rod behind her, didn’t feel their eyes boring into her back.

She wasted no words. With a raised chin and a small lick of her lips, she reached out to press her thumb against Zabini’s forehead and pushed her fingers through his hair. “Imperio.” A milky glaze spread over his eyes. “Keep everyone out of the boys’ dormitories til I come back.” The boy nodded. 

Then she seized Rab’s hand, pulled him out from between the bug-eyed Parkinson twins, and led him up the stairs to his dorm. Rod and Bellatrix, still squished against each other, blatantly stared (the latter quite amused); she spared them only one haughty, narrowed look.

Once Andromeda and Rab passed, Rod threw his hands up incredulously. “Did that really just happen?”

Bellatrix chuckled. “I think it is currently happening. Pay up, sucker.” She extended him a triumphant palm. Miserable, he counted out 10 galleons into her hand. She tutted when he stopped. “20. We went double or nothing.”

“I didn’t agree to that!”

“Well you didn’t deny it. Should’ve said no while you had the chance.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Rod.” She gave him a warning look.

He miserably slapped 10 more galleons into her palm. “Fuckin Rab.”

“I don’t think Rab had anything to do with it. Check out Zabini.” Bellatrix nodded her head at the boy conspicuously placed at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes swam with that milky whiteness, ever so often disrupted by a curl of purple or gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Write your own damn smut 😊 - wherever it fits from here on out. Because if you can dream it, it probably happened somewhere in some universe.  
> Also, I just really like Rod for some reason.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	6. There Is No Mercy in this House

It was the parties that were Andromeda’s downfall, in more ways than one. She helped Rod and Bellatrix throw so many of them their seventh year before she knew that would be the case. Years later, after Narcissa and Bellatrix became people that Andromeda used to know, it was the time spent planning for, enjoying, and recovering these festivities that she would choose to remember most often about them (“Dora, be careful about Sytherin parties, your Aunt Bella used to choose one visiting Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw to turn into a salamander each night”); it’s what she would privately come to call “the good time” (“yes, Ted, blood rune roulette was actually quite fun and safe… yes, for everyone… almost everyone”). Even though Andromeda never kicked her habit of being grumpy during the merriment, Bellatrix almost always put extra effort into pushing cheerfulness through to her – whether through loud toasts given to her at the height of celebration (“the best woman of the house!”), gentle gossip with her in a lull (“can I get you to come with me to watch Penelope and Alice make fools of themselves with the faux amortentia?”), or even sort of tender giggles while stacked in a large armchair with Narcissa amidst the hubbub of it all. Almost always, because sometimes the dark-haired witch put the same extra effort into pushing every button she knew her middle sister had, and that was always jarring even if unsurprising. Ironically, the party that finally did Andromeda in was not one where Bellatrix was giving her a hard time. It was one where she was giving her no time whatsoever.

_“Siri wants to come.” The dingy liquor store wasn’t exactly where 16 year old Andromeda wanted to be spending a February Hogsmeade day, and she had was peeved with Sirius for asking her and with Bellatrix and Rod for making a thing out of giving permission._

_Rod snorted. “Did he tell you you were his favorite cousin again? Remind me, Bells - why are we buying this cheap shit when we could be raiding the Black cellar?”_

_“Because we’re trying to get all of Slytherin sodding drunk without our parents knowing. And everyone wants a good excuse for the ways they want to embarrass themselves.” Bella inspected a plastic bottle of shit vodka with an American label. “Andy, tell Siri he can come if he brings Lily Evans.”_

_Rod guffawed. Andromeda tried to as well._

_That night, Bellatrix charmed the common room door to open only with Rod’s, Andromeda’s, or her own wand, so that once the festivities started no one could expose them by going out or coming in. It took very little time for the common room to reek of alcohol and, in some places, vomit. Showboating spells swayed in the air, as drunk as their casters, and slurred words were drowned out by loud muggle music that was giving Andromeda her only satisfaction. Otherwise, she watched her older sister laugh and twirl with grandiosity, a bottle of the American vodka in each hand sloshing out into the mouths of the begging admirers gathered around and cheering at her. Bellatrix was so libertine, so entrancing, so desirable, so…_

_Andromeda eventually grew tired of navigating her feelings of inferiority with the taste of stale vodka and decided to let Bella and Rod shut it all down and clean up. She hadn’t seen them in a while, but it didn’t matter. They were responsible for their own party, and she needed to escape the madness. Unfortunately, when she went upstairs and pulled back the curtains around her bed, she found Bellatrix straddling a half-naked Lily Evans while the Gryffindor’s hands clawed long red streaks into the dark-haired witch’s bare back._

_She snapped. “Gods in bloody hell! Get the FUCK off my FUCKING bed, you whores!” She was livid._

_She wasn’t sure when or how she cast the spell, but she saw the other witches’ eyes grow wide as the blazing kelpie head with a mane of crackling flames rose above her. She took no notice of the curtains catching fire before she slammed the door and ran down the stairs. The fiendfyre followed her, growing larger by the second. The bannisters spit smoke under her hands, and by the time she was down in the common room flames were already licking the furniture and the feet of students scrambling on top of them to escape the fire. Useless aguamenti, aqua erectus, immobulus, glacius, flame-freezing and extinguishing spells all were consumed repeatedly, dissolving in the rising heat. An otherwise impressive 30-foot fountain of water that emitted from a sixth-year’s wand was swallowed whole by the kelpie’s mouth. Icicles rained from ceiling and disappeared instantly into the angry blaze. Smoke billowed from the rafters and embers exploded from the floor. Panicking students hollered and hammered on the common room door futilely trying to escape._

_Andromeda was aware of the screaming and the burning through her red rage, but she did not care and could not bring herself to respond._

_It was her younger sister’s voice that penetrated her madness. “Andy! End the spell! ANDY! Stop it!”_

_She was being shaken violently, but nothing could have mattered less to her. There were so many things screaming._

_“Narcissa, you have to get her to stop! It’s caught the tapestries! The ceiling!”_

_“She’s not responding!”_

_“Narcissa, we can’t get out! The center beam is smoking!”_

_“Zabini, can you still send a patronus?! To Slughorn! Or Dumbledore!”_

_“Do something, Narcissa!”_

_“I’m trying!!”_

_She was thrown to the floor, and a powerful slap exploded on her cheek. Narcissa’s blonde hair hung over her face like a curtain. “ANDY! You’re going to kill us!” Another open palm ripped her face to the side. “Someone find Bella now! Andy, please!” Yet another slap split her lip open. The smell of blood and smoke mixed in her nostrils; it was almost sweet._

_A rush of black hair vaulted over her. Strong arms seized under her armpits dragging her upwards into a violent hug. Bellatrix was behind her, with one arm wrapped across her chest and the other locked behind her neck vaguely reminiscent of some wrestling move. Her sister’s voice came low and urgent in her ear. “Andy. Andy. Listen to me. You can stop this. I’m here. Just listen. I’m here.”_

_Then she blacked out; the fire and the magic disintegrated to the floor._

That was how she burnt the first bridges with the other purebloods. Waiting out the rest of the year’s Slytherin parties in the Room of Requirement was also how she found herself kissing Ted Tonks on the regular with a passion she didn’t know she had – the first passion that didn’t make her heart sink with dread. 

**

Andromeda couldn’t understand why she was _always_ more drunk than Bellatrix. The summer after Bellatrix graduated from Hogwarts, whenever she and Rod cajoled the younger Black sisters into impromptu revelry (and they were always doing so - the whole summer between her fifth and sixth years was just one long bender in Andromeda’s memory), it seemed like liquor bottles grew on the ends of Bellatrix’ arms where her hands should have been. She strutted the Manor or the Lestrange summer home gesturing her arms wildly and sloshing alcohol on anyone in her general vicinity. For all her drunken carousing, however, she remained steady on her feet with wand, wit, and tongue dialed and deadly as always. She was quick to jump into action for a duel or a stray, cruel spell or just to show off at any moment’s notice, no matter how much she’d already had to drink. The bloodthirstiness that had lurked at her surface throughout her time at Hogwarts became an ever-present lust that hung around her, and it drove many a visitor away. To those who put up with it, however, it only seemed to make her more intoxicating.

At least that’s how Andromeda felt. It was almost the only thing she remembered feeling. The whole summer was a blur of lounging on the East Wing couches, Rod passing her drinks, learning to juggle doxies, Bellatrix whispering in her ear, and Narcissa tucking her into bed. If she put in real effort, she could later recall snippets of things like ganging up on Narcissa to turn her platinum hair into a never-ending rotation of colors, all three of them crawling onto the roof of the North Tower in the middle of the night to watch the fireflies she conjured from sandy bits of roofing, and Bellatrix coaxing her into skinny-dipping in the dark after the boys had gone home. She found herself on the end of her older sister’s wand frequently, and even though she knew Bellatrix didn’t need a wand to wield frightful magic, it was still an intimidating position to be in. It was all in jest, of course, but she was never quite sure where Bellatrix drew the lines between jest and aggression. The only benefit of being perpetually drunk during that time was that she was mostly too inebriated to stir up her own damned raw magic, and even though her sister’s lips, hips, and whispers terrorized her, any period of time without some god-awful eruption of magic was a rare blessing indeed. That’s part of the reason she put up with Bellatrix.

The eldest Black sister’s sycophantic taunting did eventually take its toll, however. One afternoon late in the summer, Andromeda was reclined in a large, squishy chair, dazed after a rowdy drinking game with her sisters, the Lestrange brothers, and a couple guys whom they said were distant cousins from France. Her dark-haired sister was sprawled across Rod and Rab, twirling some bottle of something, when she propped her head up on one hand and looked pointedly at Andromeda.

“Andy. Show us your patronus.”

“What?”

“C’mon. The French boys don’t believe you can cast one, and I like the face you make when you do it.” A round of laughter from the boys satisfied the dark-haired witch in a way Andromeda didn’t like.

“No.”

“Pleaaaseeee. We all wanna watch you.” Bellatrix pouted, which was a thing she had to look away from.

She flung a burning ball of ice at her sister instead.

Bellatrix’ laughter trilled, and she forced the ball into Rab’s mouth. “Fine. You’re a buzzkill per usual.” The boy raked pieces of ice out of his mouth and sucked down a drink.

Bellatrix switched to salaciously egging on the boys’ raunchy jabber about their sexual fantasies. Andromeda rolled her eyes, dropped her head back to rest on the chair, and stopped listening to them. She should have known better. She should have known her older sister well enough to not let her guard down when she was such rare form. The dark-haired, full grown woman startled her violently when she plopped down in her lap. She shook her head and blinked to try to gather her wits as Bellatrix swung her legs around so that her feet hung off the side of the chair and placed an elbow on the opposite armrest while facing Andromeda. 

“What about you, baby girl? What are you dreaming about over here?” A sickly sweetness dripped off the witch’s voice.

“Get off me.” Andromeda’s protest wasn’t convincing to anyone who heard her.

“Get off on you?” Her sister feigned surprise. “Wow. Is that what you’re into? I would never have guessed.” There was a roar of laughter.

Bellatrix flicked her tongue between her lips. “Bet you got something rotten up in that oh-so-serious head of yours. The pretty ones always do.” She slung a prurient grin over her shoulder and winked at the boys. They cheered, and it was only then that Andromeda noticed their rapt attention.

“Get the hell off, Bella.”

“Maybe you should stop, Bells.” Rod was the only one who looked dubious, and Andromeda decided – with the moment of clarity that comes in the most inopportune times – that concern looked rather good on him.

“Why?” The witch on her lap giggled.

“Because you’re being a creep.” She shifted lamely in a weak attempt to get up.

“Noooo, Andy. Don’t go yet.” Bellatrix’ hand was on Andromeda’s chest and then on her neck and then roughly combing through her hair. It was so uncomfortable and so overwhelming.

The boys were chanting something, but she couldn’t hear them. She could only feel her sister’s hands pushing her head back, pulling it forward, and grasping her by the chin. Then it was warm lips pressed into the soft of her neck and a clever, unkind tongue running along her jawline.

She lost it. She seized her sister by the roots of her hair and yanked her head upwards as she jumped to her feet and dumped her onto the ground. “What the _fucking_ hell is wrong with you?”

The boys were still mid-cheer and slapping the arms of their chairs. Andromeda could see Narcissa, one hand on her forehead, mouth agape, wide eyes glued to them. Bellatrix recovered quickly and was on her feet with her hair re-arranged in the mere seconds it took for the middle Black sister to scrutinize the room with growing rage.

“Andy has always been a little uptight,” Bellatrix sneered. The boys began to boo and hiss, but she was utterly unphased. Her wickedness surveyed with interest the purple and yellow magic beginning to bloom out in shudders from her auburn-haired sister. She settled back on her heels and lifted her chin to lock eyes with those endless brown ones churning with a rare rancor. “Haven’t you, baby girl?”

“I hate you!” Andromeda spat at her.

“We all know _that_ isn’t true.” Bellatrix rolled her eyes at the boys, and they whooped and hollered again.

Without thinking, Andromeda’s wand was out and slashing at the row of boys (including Rod, despite her earlier appreciation for him). A wordless spell ripped their heads sideways in sync, and blood and teeth sprayed from them. They were lifted into the air, levitating above the furniture with rigid limbs and terror sweeping their faces. She shook violently while staring at her sister, wand arm outstretched, holding them helplessly in place. 

Bellatrix returned the stare with puckered lips; what should have been fear or concern for her friends was replaced with malice in her eyes. “They’re only doxies, baby girl.”

Only doxies... only wicked little things that she could create or destroy on a whim... wicked little things that were symptomatic of something that she hated. 

“Don’t call me that!” Andromeda slashed her wand down, and the boys slammed into the ground. They lay silent and unmoving. Narcissa cried out something and ran to them, but neither of her sisters acknowledged her.

“I’ll call you whatever I want. And you’ll let me.” The dark-haired witch was pushing for something.

Andromeda gave it to her. She swung her wand arm like a club at her older sister, spitting out spells too quickly for any of them to identify. Bellatrix threw up an expert protego, dancing to dodge the onslaught. Andromeda grew more vicious, now punctuating her jinxes with angry screeches until finally a cannon of magic burst forth from her chest. Bellatrix easily sidestepped it but turned her head to watch it collide with the wall. A bull’s eye of waves rippled out through the stone until the entire room undulated with Andromeda’s magic. She returned her gaze to her sister just in time to see a green streak accompanied by a loud “crucio!” arcing toward her. She ducked and popped back up with delighted surprise. The middle sister froze, suddenly aware of what she had just done. Rage and consternation battled for priority in her mind.

But Bellatrix’ lips parted in a seductive smirk, and her eyes glimmered with a new type of desire. “Hello, Andromeda Black. Where have _you_ been all my life?”

“Shut up!” Andromeda threw a glowing stinging jinx at her sister, still unsure of how she wanted to continue.

Bellatrix batted it away with her hand and deployed her wand. “Oh, you’re gonna do better than that.” Her arms hung coolly at her side as she took two menacing steps toward her sister. 

Narcissa rushed to stand between them. “Stop it! Things are bad, and you’re about to make them worse.”

Bellatrix flicked her wand at her littlest sister without removing her eyes from Andromeda, sending her crashing unceremoniously onto the couch, totally immobilized except for her wildly blinking eyelids. “Quiet, Cissy. The big girls are playing.” 

“Don’t fucking treat her like that!” Andromeda screamed and spun her wand arm in a wide circle above her head.

A heavy storm of turbulent purple and gold erupted from her wand and crashed into Bellatrix’ electric blue magic racing toward her. The collision went up in a tornado of colors swallowed by silver and red. That was the last thing she remembered of the duel until she woke up straddling Bellatrix’ torso, pinning her to the floor. She had her wand in one hand, Bellatrix’ in the other. Both of her elbows were up in the air with the wand tips pointed at her sister’s face. Bellatrix’ lips were peeled back and plastered to her cheeks by purple and yellow tendrils which also knotted around her tongue on their way up to the wands. Blood pouring from her eyes and nose was collecting on her teeth, gums, and the corners of her mouth. It was the most horrific thing Andromeda had ever seen, not least because of her sister’s maniacal laughter. The blood in her mouth burbled with it, and her tongue writhed. Her midnight black curls bounced, and Andromeda could feel her sister’s body shake under her with barbaric mirth.

Andromeda’s throat stuck to itself. She dropped the wands as if burned by them and stumbled off her sister in panic. Her breath came in fast, harsh gasps while she scuttled away on all fours. She tried desperately to shake the tendrils of magic clinging to her hands to no avail; instead they curled and splattered blood on her. Once she found her feet, she sprinted out of the room down the hallway, where she nearly collided with her father. He stupefied her on the spot. 

Tom Riddle was visiting the Manor that day. Cygnus nearly drove him mad with his pettifogging idiocy, but after seeing Andromeda’s magic roll volatilely down the hallway, Bellatrix laughing freakishly through her own blood, and Narcissa managing a room full of incapacitated young wizards once she was released, he decided to put up with the current head of the Black family because he knew he’d discovered a goldmine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excerpt adapted from Shards of Nuance Chapter 18.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	7. A Black's a Black's a Black

Andromeda and Bellatrix made up. It baffled Narcissa to no end that they were at each other’s throats - sometimes literally - one second and the next laying side by side in the grass murmuring at the stars and each other. She wondered often if she was jealous, but by the time she was 14, she concluded that there was no way their kind of camaraderie was worth the price they cost each other. Instead, she simply followed behind them, cleaning up after them so that their father, Dumbledore, the other Hogwarts students, and now that Riddle wizard wouldn’t glimpse the depth of their volatility and its consequences. The toll it took on Andromeda was easy to see. It had been brooding for years, but it became readily apparent after the fiendfyre incident. Narcissa sometimes wondered if it ran as deep as her magic now, but there was no way to know that. It weighed heavily on Bellatrix, too, though the eldest Black sister would never admit it and no one would ever ask her. 

When Narcissa and Andromeda returned to Hogwarts for the first year without their sister, the school felt generally less trepidation and tension – they couldn’t deny that – but it also lacked a certain liveliness. Bellatrix wrote them letters, usually about things they didn’t want to know about (sex, duels, experimental rituals, to name a few), but that’s how it always was with her. Andromeda’s letters were long; Narcissa’s were short in comparison, although upon reflection they were probably of a rather average length. Occasionally, Andromeda received a howler that trumpeted something incredibly embarrassing about her at an unholy decibel and ended with raunchy laughter and condescending pet names. The auburn-haired sister took to exploding them into fireworks before they reached that point and raining their ashes down on the table of whichever house was paying her the most attention.

With Bellatrix absent, Narcissa began spending more of her time and energy on her own exploits. The Selwyn boy in Andromeda’s year (she never could remember his name) and Lucius Malfoy (one year her junior) spent an enormous amount of time vying for her attention, and she let them. She flitted between them, not bothering to hide the fact that she was pitting them against each other to see what she could get out of them. They accepted the situation without complaint. She supposed Bellatrix, and perhaps even Andromeda, had already set everyone’s expectations for the Black sisters. All the better.

Andromeda was conspicuously hidden for most of the year. Narcissa couldn’t really blame her after the fiendfyre incident. More than once, she found her middle sister strolling away from the owlery or the Room of Requirement, hands in her pockets and lost in gloomy thoughts. If she saw her with people, it was usually a group of Ravenclaws in the library, cutting up on the lawn outside the boathouse, or carousing at Three Broomsticks. They were mostly muggleborns, but Narcissa never confronted her sister about it because she couldn’t begrudge her the happiness she exuded around them. Even though she didn’t show the same lightness with Narcissa, the two sisters became close again. Their experimentation with healing spells blossomed, and while neither of them had reason to use them now that Bellatrix wasn’t around, they developed an exceptional working dynamic that rivalled the two older Black sisters’ chemistry.

Bellatrix met them for most of their Hogsmeade days. Narcissa always began the day with them for a single butterbeer before leaving to join her friends. Bellatrix brought news about their father’s ever-increasing obsession with Riddle and his many trips to Grimmauld Place to strategize ways to motivate the Wizengamot and the Ministry to enact new measures against the muggleborns. This bored her to no end – what useless, absurd ideologies their father bought into – and she usually cut her eldest sister off to ask for updates on her wedding planning; she never received any (“fuck off and ask Rod if you care that much”). If Narcissa returned to the Three Broomsticks after her day’s escapades, she felt guilty about interrupting them. Bellatrix usually had her legs crossed and propped up on Andromeda’s knees under the table while she ran her fingers around the rim of her glass. Her auburn-haired sister struggled with where to put her hands if she didn’t have a glass to wrap them around but usually managed some almost nonchalant posture in the booth. Andromeda _was_ always very intoxicated when her younger sister finally dragged her back to the castle. Narcissa was the first to suspect that problem and the first to choose not to confront it directly.

**

Andromeda did loathe the Slytherin common room now, and that meant she didn’t repair relationships with most of the Slytherin students. She regrew a chip on her shoulder against most Gryffindors. Her old Hufflepuff friends still respected her but viewed her with some suspicion after hearing the rumors about the fiendfyre incident. The Chenowith girl, in particular, avoided her like the plague; she suspected it had something to do with the day she’d caught the Hufflepuff returning to the castle with Bellatrix late one evening last year. The effort it took to care wasn’t worth it. 

It was the Ravenclaws that took her in. She wasn’t sure at first if the little group she settled into knew about her budding relationship with Ted until the innocent comments about leaving the two of them alone to study became unreasonably frequent. She signed up for an Herbology lab that she didn’t need in the middle of the semester because Ted was in it and joined an extracurricular magical planting project for the same reason. When Dumbledore found them exiting the Room of Requirement together late one evening, she spent hours trying to quell her panic despite the headmaster’s generous silence and sad smile. 

Ted was kind and patient – probably too patient, she thought, and left it at that. He listened to her without interrupting; she stumbled through her thoughts about purebloods and muggleborns, ranted about her family, cried about the things she’d done with her magic. When she felt self-conscious about having talked about herself too much, he answered her every question about himself honestly and earnestly. She decided it was his earnestness that she loved about him, and the way it could dissolve into playful lovemaking at the drop of a hat was what made her want to be with him forever. He made her feel beautiful, smart, and in control; she was everything she wanted to be when she was with him. Perhaps it was a little too perfect.

Too perfect, because her darkness roared on inside her and spilled out in ugly ways. Barely a month into the school year, she and everyone else spied Lily Evans laughing too loudly and stroking James Potter’s arm in the courtyard. The school made itself drunk on their relationship. James appeared quite the gentleman. He carried Lily’s books while walking to class, bought all her drinks at the Three Broomsticks, and made quite a fanfare of officially asking her out with charmed roses that multiplied by the dozens with each word he said and exploded into fireworks when she agreed. They spent the last warm days of the season making out by the Black Lake inconveniently in front of the greenhouse where Andromeda now spent many of her free hours working.

It nauseated her. Each time she saw them, the image of Lily naked and euphoric under her older sister thrust its way into her mind and boiled her magic under her skin. Initially, she spent equal time furious at them and hating herself for the thing that coiled in her stomach at the memory. Over a few weeks, however, her anger slowly consumed her other torments, and her ruminating turned into an icy desire for revenge until nothing else mattered.

It ended up being far too easy. For all his bravado, James was a standard sucker, and even after the Potters and the Longbottoms rallied around her when she was kicked out of her family, she never did regret what she did that year.

**

“Lily’s not quite what you think she is, James.”

James ignored the redhead. Molly Prewett was a gossip and a bad one at that. He only put up with her nettling for the sake of her older brothers. He supposed he had idolized them somewhat, mainly for their quidditch skill, and felt obligated to think well of their little sister even though she was clearly a twat.

“You know the Snape kid is obsessed with her.”

“Well, she’s amazing. Snape’s a creep, but he’s not stupid.”

“She lets it happen. She could stop it, but she doesn’t it.”

“Molly, let it go. She’s just kind to him. As long as I don’t have to be around him, it’s fine. I trust her.”

“I’m not sure you should.” Molly swung her legs back and forth. She was seated on the table next to his open textbooks, interrupting what otherwise should have been a productive study session (which was relatively rare for him, so he was extra peeved with her). A wily smile that was not at all becoming appeared on her face. “I heard she hooked up with Bellatrix Black.”

“Who have you not heard that about?” James didn’t deign to look at her.

“If she did, that’s a pretty big red flag, don’t you think?” Molly pretended to be scandalized. “The Blacks are no good.”

“That’s painting with a pretty broad brush. Bellatrix probably isn’t as bad as she seems. Andromeda’s not.”

“Andromeda definitely is. You know what she did to Karkaroff. And everyone knows she uses unforgivable, and we’re not even sure Bellatrix does that.”

“She’s not. She spends practically no time with purebloods anymore. She’s always with Ted and the other Ravenclaw muggleborns. And the Hufflepuff kids are obsessed with her.”

“Whatever, James. A Black’s a Black’s a Black. Nothing will change that. And that should worry you about Lily.” She hopped off the table. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

James frowned. He knew Molly wasn’t totally wrong: the Black sisters were a problem, and merely consorting with them probably should cast some suspicion on whoever did it. This presented too many ethical problems to him. It was so much easier to think of things as absolutely good and bad, with purebloods like the Black family (at least that half of the Black family) firmly planted on the bad side, but Andromeda had been quietly challenging those absolutes recently. Everyone was talking about it, and everyone had their own opinion about her. It was probably unfair to the witch, but the Blacks maybe didn’t warrant fairness from the rest of them. He decided not to waste more time on it and committed himself to his own conclusions: Lily was a good person, and Andromeda probably was too. It wasn’t worth wondering otherwise.

All of this meant that it had to be Molly’s fault that he broke his own rules and wasted quite a lot of time wondering about Andromeda. When he noticed her looking at him in DADA a few days later, absently staring with those lambent, auburn eyes and transfiguring her wand to a quill and back repeatedly (wait, what?) while twirling it in her hands, his stomach sucked in and back out involuntarily. Andromeda and Lily looked remarkably similar aside from their eyes – Lily’s emerald perpetually full of joy versus this witch’s dark, brooding ones. He decided this was a compliment to Lily before he realized what he’d done with that thought.

They broke into small groups to practice the rest of the period, which fortunately allowed him no room for his mind to keep wandering. It was almost the end of class when he was blindsided by a body knocking softly into him. A slim arm zipped expertly across him to snatch something out of the air while gentle but intentional fingers pressed against his ribs in a half-hearted attempt to keep their bodies apart. Andromeda’s famous auburn hair swirled over her shoulder against him as she lowered her hand gently cupping a squirming creature without moving away from him.

“Sorry, James,” came the witch’s low voice from her perfect lips. “I always have trouble with doxies, you know.”

He had to swallow so that he could push words out of his mouth. “Not a problem. You don’t have trouble catching them.”

“Not usually.” She raised her eyebrows with a sly smile.

Only that evening as he fell asleep did he consider that there was no way she still had the trouble with doxies since she was excelling in his seventh-year DADA class while still in her sixth year. He felt guilty for mulling it over so much.

That was Thursday. On Saturday evening, during a small celebration of Gryffindor’s quidditch victory over Slytherin that day, Sirius returned to the common room after a claimed rendezvous with the Abbott girl. James was already buzzing with alcohol, so Sirius’ glazed eyes didn’t register with him.

“She was pretty good, eh, mate? You look like you got your brains fucked out.” Finnegan slapped Sirius on the back, and they all roared with laughter.

The Black heir shrugged them off with a grin. “James.” He turned pointedly to his friend. “Let’s get a dragon.”

“A dragon?!” He laughed. “What’ll we do with a dragon?”

“Terrorize my family with it. Train it to attack Slytherin pricks. Fly it to Beauxbatons and impress all the girls with it.”

“Sounds great.” James laughed again as Lily slapped him playfully on the arm. “Let’s do it.”

“I know a guy in Albania who could get us one. He could send it to us right now. He’ll just bill it to my father.”

“The Blacks, am I right?” Lily scoffed.

“No, seriously. Let’s owl him right now. It’ll be here in a couple days.”

James looked at him. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“C’mon.” He grabbed a piece of parchment, scribbled a short note, and stood abruptly. “Let’s go.”

James and Lily left with their friend, both reluctant to support his mania and excited by his antics as always. At the owlery, they strolled by the windows to gaze out over the grounds as he procured his owl.

“James? Lily?” A woman’s voice came from behind them.

They turned to see Andromeda emerging from the shadows of the owlery with a raven perched on her wrist, a rolled parchment dangling lazily from her fingers. The moonlight glinted off her every curve, which were many - the waves in her hair, the angle of her jaw, her lips, her breasts, the trousers that clung to her hips. Lily slipped her hand into his. He could feel her tense up, but he buried his conflicted feelings.

Andromeda spoke again. “I thought Gryffindor would surely be throwing a rowdy party after decimating us today.”

James wet his lips. “Sirius got a hare-brained idea to owl someone for a dragon.”

“Oh, did he?” Andromeda’s voice dripped with surprise, which in hindsight perhaps sounded farcical. 

“And what are you doing?” Lily gritted her teeth.

“Contacting someone at St. Mungo’s for my wounded pride after that game. Shame Bellatrix wasn’t there.” She flashed a deadly smile at Lily. “Things would have gone very differently if she were.”

James cleared his throat. “Why don’t you play, Andromeda?”

“Oh, I do. I’m just nowhere near as competitive enough. I wouldn’t last a week of practice. Pretty damn good shot though.”

“I bet,” James let out before getting elbowed in the ribs.

“But you’re quite the keeper, James. I’d go so far as to say you’re the only reason Gryffindor wins.”

James turned pink. “Sirius is our man.”

“Siri sucks ass, and you know it.” The young wizard held back a snort as the auburn-haired witch continued. “You know, I could go for a little quidditch. What do you say, James? You and me, one-on-one?” She cocked her head and quirked her lips in a motion very reminiscent of her older sister but much more mysterious.

He swallowed thickly. “You’re on. Loser buys the other a drink.” Lily elbowed him again.

“Two.”

Sirius returned just in time to give Lily a reason to say, “Ok, looks like we’re all done here.” The Gryffindor witch tugged at her boyfriend’s arm, and the three of them left the middle Black sister smirking in the moonlight.

**

They never settled the bet. In fact, they never played quidditch at all. The next time James saw Andromeda outside of class was a quiet evening in the middle of the week when he was slouching in front of the fire, waiting for Lily to come back from her astrology lab. There were very few people out of their rooms at that point, which is why Finnegan’s loud voice was so startling.

“What the hell?!”

James jerked his head around just in time to see the tall, graceful Slytherin witch with cascading auburn hair climbing into the Gryffindor common room. No one followed her.

“Shh, Finn. It’s all right. I’ve only come to use your floo. I’ll only be a minute.” She strode towards the fireplace and – consequently - James. Finnegan, who had been soft toward the middle Black sister ever since the Karkaroff incident third year, dropped his questions and let her be.

James swung his feet down flat on the floor and leaned forward toward the approaching young woman. “How did you get in?”

“Siri gave me the password.”

“Doesn’t Slytherin have a floo?”

Andromeda waved her hand dismissively. “It’s monitored by a group from the Sacred 28, which is nauseating.”

He tried to rationalize his curious smile. “What kind of secrets is such a fearsome daughter of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black keeping from pureblood society?”

She returned his smile. “Wouldn’t tell you if I could. BUT mostly my sister is awfully demanding when it comes to keeping in touch.”

“I’d say. Those howlers are nasty.”

“She’s going to get a stinging jinx for every single one of those when I get home for the holidays. James, how do you light the Gryffindor floo?”

He blinked at her. “Same as any other…”

She cocked her head at him, asking something she wasn’t saying. He sighed, rose to his feet, and stepped toward the mantle. She moved closer to him, presumably blocking the flames so that those in the room wouldn’t see the floo transmission.

“James, I’d like to get to know you better.” It sounded like her breathy voice was inches from his ear, but that surely wasn’t possible.

A side glance revealed her lips were, in fact, inches away, and the depths of her eyes yawned ….desire? He dallied with the floo powder. “Maybe next week at Hogsmeade I could get away…”

“I would like that very much.”

“Andromeda?” Sirius’ voice rang through the room.

She didn’t divert her attention. Her voice was husky and still too low to be heard by anyone else. “On second thought, never mind about the floo. There’s far too much company.” She placed her hand on his bicep, trailing her fingers as she walked away.

“Hello, Siri. I was just leaving. Good to see you.”

Orion’s son peered at her suspiciously as she passed him. “I think you’re bad news, Andromeda.”

“And you are merely disappointing,” she sneered and slammed the door behind her.

“How did she get in here?”

“She said you gave her the password.”

Sirius shook his head, so James ducked down to stare intently at his textbook. “Careful, mate.”

**

The sex was rather forgettable. James was no more or less than average in Andromeda’s opinion, but he was more than a little malleable, as she had guessed. She did get off, but the only thing James had to do with it was that he was a puddle of a man in her hands. He writhed, he moaned, he shook, he shrieked, and he cried giant, rolling, endless tears. When he collapsed on the floor, she hung him up with a spell, and when she was bored with that, she lashed him to the center beam of the shack. When she grew tired of hearing his pitiful voice, she muted him and took pleasure in the silent screams she wrenched from his lips, and when he finally passed out, she revived him and began again. She was drunk on her own power, lusting over her own dominance.

When she felt she achieved all she came for, she lifted his tired face up and licked the blood from his lips before restoring him to a sufficiently presentable state with a flick of her wrist. A potion retrieved from her robes enlivened him enough to return to his friends but not enough to hide his ecstatic weariness.

“You are – unreal,” James stuttered hoarsely.

“So I’m told.” Andromeda didn’t bother to look at him while tidying the shack.

“When can – when can we meet again?”

“Probably never.” Her voice was now stone, completely unlike it had been minutes earlier.

He was confused. “What? Why?”

“I found it – you - rather boring.”

“But how – that was – ungodly and… incredible.”

She laughed coolly while sauntering toward him. “Ungodly, indeed. At least for you. What will Lily say?”

“I won’t tell her, I swear.” Panic at her sudden change edged his voice. “Don’t say anything, please.”

“Oh, I won’t. As long as you don’t. Your secrets are safe with me.” She traced his collarbone with the tip of her wand. He lurched forward to kiss her again, but she pushed his lips back with her wand. “No more.”

“Another time, then.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Andromeda – “

“Get out, James.”

She gave him about thirty seconds head start, just enough time for a nosy Molly Prewett to see them both on the path from the Shrieking Shack. The girl’s wide, irksome eyes pleased her, and she knew Lily would be crushed by the morning. After passing, she wordlessly lit the grass around the Prewett girl on fire and left her to deal with it on her own.

**

James was insufferable after that. He interrupted Andromeda going to and from classes, cornered her in the library, and waited for her outside the dungeons for hours. She always brushed past him without sparing him a word or occasionally knocked him out of her way with a flick of her fingers, the latter mostly when there were Gryffindors watching. He even began to pester her in the Great Hall during meals. Whenever he went out of his way to try to get the middle Black sister’s attention, Lily stiffened and cast her gaze down, until eventually her eyes were on the floor more than they weren’t. If she and Andromeda crossed paths, she gave the middle Black sister a single loathing glance before diffidence forced her head down.

James and Lily did not break up, and that was perhaps the only thing about them that impressed Andromeda. One evening, on the way back from the Room of Requirement, she and Ted found them arguing loudly in the hallway. Ted pulled her behind a statue, and they held their breath while they watched Lily shake her fist in James’ face as he spread his hands wide in grand gestures of incredulity.

Andromeda’s back was nestled against Ted in the small space between the statue and the wall, and she took more than a little pleasure in pressing up against him while watching the couple fight. She felt him bury a snort in her hair before brushing his lips against her ear.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you, does it?” He whispered.

“Mm… Why would it?” She knew he could see her smiling.

“A rumor or two. And a pretty good sense for who you are as a person.”

“Be careful what you imply, Ted Tonks.” She let he head fall back on his chest and placed a hand on his thigh behind her. “Besides, what are you going to do about it?”

“Damn well nothing, it seems like.”

“Right.” She turned to around, cast a muffliato over them, and kissed him until Lily and James were gone - which was potentially more satisfying than kissing him normally.

**

By the end of the semester, Andromeda began to dread more than relish James’ groveling. The train ride to King’s Cross was long with her dread that he would pull a ridiculous stunt before they made it home. She sat with Narcissa and Andrew Selwyn and shooed off Lucius Malfoy when he poked his head in and made to sit down between them. 

Narcissa made a face at her. “Let me deal with him.”

“Selwyn’s right here, Cissy.” She gestured at the boy’s cheeks turning bring red.

“Like you have room to talk.” Narcissa yelped as a pimple swelled on her face and exploded over her cheek. “You’re as bad as Bella nowadays - who, by the way, is picking us up from the station.”

This gave the middle Black sister mixed feelings, and she sunk low in her seat and glowered out the window for the rest of the ride. When the train slowed, she hopped up and beelined for the exit. Unfortunately, James was literally waiting for her on the platform. A cursory glance revealed Lily collecting her luggage a little way down the platform and Bellatrix waiting a few yards beyond her. Many years later, Andromeda would remember this in great detail as one of the few times she felt most powerful and pleasantly wicked without regretting it.

James wore a pleading, pitiful look. “Andromeda, come see me over break. I can arrange everything. Please, just once.” He took her hand.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to touch me, Potter?” She snatched her hand away and used the momentum to backhand him across the face. “You disgust me.” 

She pushed him away and sauntered down the platform toward her sister, Narcissa hot on her heels. Lily, aware that she was in the sisters’ path, stepped aside deferentially, but instead of passing the muggleborn, Andromeda turned, slipped one hand onto Lily’s cheek to draw it toward her, and hissed, “Checkmate, bitch.”

Then Andromeda slid her fingers from the young witch’s cheek and continued on toward Bellatrix, who chuckled audibly as she stared her middle sister down. 

Narcissa privately thought that whole event should have been more problematic to her middle sister’s friends and admirers, but it just wasn’t. This confounded her for some time. Not even Bellatrix got off the hook that easily, though she supposed Bellatrix didn’t exactly want off the hook and perhaps that made all the difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearly, the James Potter incident caught my fancy.
> 
> Annddd, I also really like Ted. IRL, my friends’ male partners are always my favorite friends so maybe this is why Rod and Ted are the way they are.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	8. Slippery Slopes

_Another fucking ball_. There was no way the Lestrange household was ever going to throw as many formal events as the Black household did. It wasn’t that they weren’t fun; she wouldn’t deny her mother that. They were just so much work, and she would rather spend her energy on almost any other thing. Finding Andromeda during a Black family formal was not one of those things, but unfortunately that was exactly what she was doing.

Bellatrix brushed off another man from the continent with a devastating smile and a condescending pat on his arm as she threaded her way through the throng of guests. “I’m engaged. Yes. The Lestrange family.”

She spied Narcissa amidst a small crowd of young – and older – men and aimed toward them. Her youngest sister was turning out to be quite the manipulator, but no one at her mercies seemed to mind yet. All the better. Perhaps it would take some of the pressure off their middle sister, and Merlin knew that would be a great service to the family.

“Cissy,” she interrupted one young wizard talking animatedly at Narcissa’s syrupy smile. “Have you seen our dearest sister?”

Narcissa let her façade slip for a moment with a frustrated sigh. “No, I haven’t, but when you find her please tell her to stop burning her suitors’ hands – or at least to stop sending them to me heal them when she does.”

The dark-haired witch chortled as she turned to leave. “Yes, I’ll tell her.”

“Bella.” Narcissa’s serious voice caused her sister to turn back. “Take this with you just in case.” The young woman slipped a small vial discretely into the palm of her hand.

 _A sobriety potion_. Bellatrix’ charcoal eyes frowned with her mouth. “She’s not really that bad, is she?”

“She has been lately.”

“I haven’t noticed.”

“That’s because it’s always after you’re gone.”

Bellatrix slipped the vial into the fabric of her dress and continued to wind her way through the guests with her characteristically wicked charm. The room was thick with people. It was easy enough to get lost in, which she supposed was both Andromeda’s problem – well, one of them – and her salvation that night. She spied her sister slouched sullenly at the far side of an empty table, blankly staring past a young man in Ministry robes leaning close to her. 

Bellatrix strode quickly to intervene. “Aaraan. Excuse me. I need to talk to my sister.” When he didn’t budge, she gently grasped him by his sleeve and dragged him out of the seat. “Alone.” 

He obliged reluctantly, and she plopped herself down next to Andromeda. A handful of drinks in various stages of emptiness and a whole bottle of champagne– presumably from vying young men - were collected in front of her.

“What are you doing, Andy?”

“About to drink myself into oblivion. What are you doing?”

“Looking for you.”

“Well, you found me. Which is fortunate. When I pass out here in a bit – and I intend to – please put me to bed before Mother and Father find out.”

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. “So I should save this sobering potion for later in the night”

The auburn-haired young woman scowled at her. “Cissy sent you over here, didn’t she? She should mind her own business.”

“I’m sure she would if you would stop sending her injured men, but that’s only sort of why I’m here.” She saw their mother’s head bobbing through the crowd nearby and furrowed her brow.

“Well, don’t keep it from me. I’m dying with anticipation.” Andromeda said sarcastically into the glass of champagne at her lips.

“We need to talk.” Bellatrix vanished the glass and its liquid contents, earning a small cry from her sister, before grasping her by the wrist and dragging her into the mass of people dancing in the middle of the room. She captured her sister’s waist with her other hand and began to lead them in mild, unaffected steps with the music.

“Excuse me. What are we doing?” Andromeda eyed Bellatrix suspiciously. Her dark curls were swept up on the top of her head, spewing flagrantly from a bun, leaving her neck and shoulders bare and uncomfortably close. Still, Andromeda complied and rested her free hand on Bellatrix’ shoulder.

“Hiding.”

“By dancing?”

“Well, you’re hiding. From Mother.”

“I’m never not hiding from Mother.”

“She’s in a particular mood right now - very displeased with you for scorning all the young men clamoring for your attention.”

“Nothing new there.”

“I think it’s in your best interest to put up a good front for the rest of the night. It’s not that hard. It’s just a game. Look, there’s Selwyn. He’s a chump and decent at dancing. Make a big show of dancing with him, move on to someone else, make sure Mother sees it, and chalk it up to family duty.”

“He is the last person I want to touch, even for a few minutes of dancing. Do you know that Cissy sucked his dick?”

“You better be next in line if you don’t want Mother to force you into spending the rest of the evening - or your life - with ol’ Tommy Riddle.” Andromeda pretended to gag. A showboating couple spun ebulliently near them and Bellatrix pulled her close against her to avoid them. “She’s started ranting about how he’s probably the only one who can handle you, _which_ – “ she pulled her leading hand behind her to keep the auburn-haired witch from backing away and plowed through her words in the her ear without allowing her protest, “- _which_ is a fair point.”

“I hate him.”

“I did stick up for you. Told her he’s not ugly enough for you.” Andromeda slapped her sister’s chest with her free hand and tried to push away, but Bellatrix slid her iron arm all the way around her waist to keep her close. “Don’t draw attention. I’m not done.”

Andromeda tried to convince herself that it was the alcohol that had her so lightheaded, that had her feeling more than looking at Bellatrix. She watched her fingertips linger delicately on her sister’s collarbone ( _surely not lingering_ ). Surely that was someone else sliding – not lifting – her hand back up to Bellatrix’ shoulder and closer to her neck ( _surely it was someone else who would do that_ ). She poked around in her foggy brain to find something to say. What came out was quite unhelpful.

“Why all black all the time, Bella? I haven’t seen you in a dress, or anything for that matter, in any other color since the Tri-Wizard ball.”

“Mm, that did make an impression on you. I just think it rather suits me, don’t you?”

Andromeda blushed. “Well, uh – “

“And that ostentatious color,” Bellatrix moved her out just far enough to scan Andromeda’s dress. “Whatever it is, it suits you. You should wear it all the time.”

“I don’t intend to wear magenta for the rest of my life.”

“Pity. What do you think about that beige that Cissy loves? Personally, it makes me want to vomit.”

Andromeda allowed herself a smug look as a quiet pop turned her sister’s stunning black dress into exactly the color that she was talking about. Her smirk turned into a small shriek when Bellatrix made a big show of throwing her into a deep dip and dropping her. Heads all around the two sisters turned to appraise them curiously.

“Sorry, baby girl. Got a little carried away.” Bellatrix yanked her younger sister up from the floor back up into her.

It was rough enough that Andromeda had to catch herself against Bellatrix, which of course gave the dark-haired witch the opportunity to secure her in position again. 

“I thought we weren’t drawing attention to ourselves,” she breathed.

“People were going to get suspicious if I didn’t cause at least a little scene.”

“I’m already suspicious.”

A giggle escaped Bellatrix’ lips that neither of them acknowledged. After a dramatic spin, her charcoal eyes and full lips pouted at Andromeda. “Fix it, Andy. Please.”

Andromeda let the beige disappear from her sister’s dress and folded her arm over Bellatrix’ shoulder to finish the song.

Narcissa ignored one of the German boys blabbering on about something for which she cared little while she watched her sisters dancing together amidst the thick crowd in the middle of the room. They looked entirely too intimate, she thought, but at least there was no fire, nothing being blown up, and no yelling. The trade-off was probably worth it, but she was still relieved when her eldest sister shoved Andromeda into Selwyn at an interlude in the music.

Back at Hogwarts, several months went by without any incident, for which Narcissa was grateful. James finally gave up his crusade, and for once it was her own chance to garner the attention of the rest of the school. Andromeda laid low and neither caused nor experienced anything problematic. Narcissa was increasingly surprised and even impressed at how much respect her middle sister was growing to command, even despite her disputed reputation. Many years later, she wondered how the House of Black, and indeed the rest of wizarding Britain, would have turned out if the relative peacefulness of that time had continued. Most people – and thus media outlets, legal proceedings, history books, and ultimately folklore - would come to believe (not unreasonably) that that good time was destroyed by the Dark Lord’s first ascent to power, but she knew, of course, that it ended because of Ted Tonks.

**

The spring sun glinted off shop windows and streets like Hogsmeade had been saving its light all winter to release on just this day. It came from everywhere to sting Narcissa’s blue eyes; her almost platinum hair did little to reduce its brightness when she swung it to cover her face. Still, the glare was glorious after a long, dark winter. It was also the reason she almost missed her eldest sister’s black curls flouncing down the street. That Bellatrix had not announced she was visiting that day and that she wasn’t headed towards any of her usual haunts gave the youngest Black sister a bad feeling. She retreated into the little shadow that there was and followed at a distance without revealing her presence. 

Bellatrix turned into an alley narrow enough to have been spared the blinding sunlight. When Narcissa peeked her head around the corner, the bad feeling bloomed larger in her stomach as Bellatrix strode toward a small group of figures, one of which was definitely Andromeda snatching herself away from one of the others. As she followed cautiously, she recognized the Tonks fellow standing resolutely next to their auburn-haired sister, who was decidedly less resolute. Two other Ravenclaws cowered behind them.

“Bella!” Andromeda squeaked. “I didn’t know you were here.” 

“Surprise.” Bellatrix stopped barely an arm’s distance from them.

Andromeda’s wide eyes flicked down to her sister’s crooked wand dangling loosely in her fingers at her side. “Well, it’s – good – to see – you. You didn’t say you were coming.” Her voice was halting.

“That would have defeated the purpose. I wanted to meet your mudbloods.” She whipped her wand up in Tonks’ face.

The auburn-haired witch beat her on the draw; her wand tip barely grazed Bellatrix’ forehead. One of the nameless Ravenclaws gasped, but everyone ignored them.

“Hello, Bellatrix. You are as rude as ever. It’s nice to see some things are consistent.” Ted’s eyes peered past the wand in his face to the dangerous woman ignoring the point of his girlfriend’s wand.

The dark-haired witch laughed darkly in a way that betrayed it was her own intentions, and not Ted’s comment, that Bellatrix found funny. “Tonks, you’re too brave for a Ravenclaw – which also means you’re too stupid to be one.”

“Back off, Bella!” Andromeda warned, twisted her wrist over, and pressed her wand tip firmly into her sister’s head.

“It’s ok, Andy.” Tonks put his hand on her forearm arm to lower it. All their eyes – including Narcissa’s – widened at the slip.

Bellatrix flashed an insidious sneer at her middle sister. “’Andy’, huh?” Her malevolent whisper was almost too low for Narcissa to hear. “Gotcha.”

Andromeda swallowed thickly. “I can explain –“

“You’re about to.”

The muggleborn wizard, still not quite matching Bellatrix’ and Andromeda’s tension (although who could?), tried to mediate. “Listen, Bellatrix, we can talk this out.”

“Get lost, Tonks.” Bellatrix spat without looking at him, but she also lowered her wand. 

When he didn’t move, Andromeda put her hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him. “Go. I’ll be fine.”

He reluctantly backed away, and the Ravenclaws scuttled after him. They all had to turn sideways to squeeze past Narcissa to leave the alley. Tonks briefly met her eyes with an unreadable expression, but the others did not.

As soon as the Ravenclaws disappeared from the alley, Bellatrix grabbed Andromeda’s elbow and threw her up against the wall. “What the _fuck_ is this?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Doesn’t actually seem like it.”

“He’s good to me.”

“How long has this been going on?”

Andromeda’s lips trembled. “Since last year.”

“Last year when?” Their dark-haired sister snarled.

“Spring.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Are you kidding? Because of what you just did. Pointing your goddamn wand in his face and threatening him for no other reason than that he’s a muggleborn.”

“I don’t care about his blood status!” Bellatrix’ voice went up a notch.

“Then what the hell do you care about?” Andromeda’s voice matched hers.

“That you think you can just go fall in love without telling me!” 

Andromeda shoved the dark-haired witch back with the force she usually only used when she was out of control. “You don’t fucking own me, Bellatrix! You don’t get a fucking say in what I do! Stop acting like it!” 

Narcissa jumped as thunder clapped above them. Heavy raindrops splattered down through the narrow alley from sudden, imposign clouds that cast a new darkness into the alley. She could hear and almost feel Andromeda’s heavy breathing; Bellatrix’ rare, still silence was as uncomfortable as her anger had been. After a few moments, the dark-haired witch pushed herself away from the wall and all but ran from the alley, barely acknowledging Narcissa as she scraped by her. Their middle sister leaned back against the wall with her face turned up toward the sky. Narcissa couldn’t tell the difference between rain and tears on Andromeda’s face, but she was sure there were both. She felt her auburn-haired sister’s magic swell through the alley, and when she could no longer bear the sight or feeling, she retreated to the now soaked Hogsmeade streets.

**

Still they made up, but this time it was Andromeda who struggled to believe it. She’d hidden in her bed for several days after the encounter, emerging only for essential classes and a meal or two. Narcissa said nothing to her initially but brought her hot meals from the kitchens late at night, which meant she had to be going to extra trouble to get it from the elves. An owl brought a letter straight to her dorm with a short note from Bellatrix asking for forgiveness. Though it was unclear for what she was asking to be forgiven, Andromeda gave it to her readily, and they resumed writing each other letters for the rest of the year. Once, after a long exam, she found Ted and her younger sister in an empty classroom, her lover excitedly scribbling equations on the board while Narcissa made notes in her arithmancy textbook. She watched them from the doorway until Ted smiled and winked at her. She disappeared after making a vulgar gesture at him, and things felt largely normal after that. When she received her apparition license, Bellatrix made a big to-do about retrieving her and forcing her to apparate them to every bar in wizarding Britain (“if you can’t apparate while drunk, you can’t apparate at all”) before returning her to Hogwarts.

When Summer came, Andromeda nourished a false but nonetheless comforting hope. She was on good terms with Ted; she was on good terms with her sisters. Dumbledore sent her home with an enormous amount of schoolwork to prepare for a seventh-year Charms honors project that she only somewhat resented. She wanted to complain, but truthfully it gave her something productive to do and the occasion to believe her bizarre magic was beneficial – which is of course exactly what the headmaster intended. The only dark thing that loomed was her sister’s wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If we continue to accept Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix (which I do unequivocally), can we have Emma Appleton as Andromeda? 
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	9. Unbearable Intimacy

“Looks pretty good, Andy. McGonagall wasn’t kidding when she said you’d gotten good at charms.” Narcissa’s voice wrinkled across the three sisters.

They were laying side by side in Bellatrix’ bed, milking all the quality time they could get before her wedding the next day. Her younger sisters flanked her under the lazy covers pulled up to their chests. Andromeda had charmed the top of the four-poster bed to twinkle with constellations, much as the ceiling in the Hogwarts Great Hall did but without the dreariness of weather.

“Thanks,” Andromeda murmured. “Took a bit, but it’s getting there.”

“It’s more than getting there. That’s why you got the honors project. But I’m a little offended.” 

“Why?”

“Well, there’s Andromeda, clearly. And there’s Orion, which means Bellatrix is right there. But no Narcissa.” The blonde witch waved her finger around in the air like she was drawing. There was a sly edge to her voice that the middle Black sister didn’t appreciate; she felt like she was getting picked on.

“Narcissa isn’t star. Bella asked for stars.”

Bellatrix sniffed in pleasure. They couldn’t see her smile in the dark, but they could feel it. “I like it, Andy. Cissy, I’ll make Mother get me a massive bouquet of narcissus daffodils for the wedding. How’s that?”

Narcissa didn’t answer her and launched into the topic at hand. “Speaking of. I have been wondering…. Have you and Rod even kissed?”

This earned a snort from theri dark-haired sister. “Nope. We’re saving ourselves til marriage.”

“Oh, please.” They could practically hear Narcissa’s eye roll. “Indulge me just for once.”

“We did sleep together once, no, twice. Won’t happen again, I assure you.”

“Even on your wedding night?” Narcissa feigned shock.

“Especially not on our wedding night.”

The two of them laughed. Andromeda did not. Her little sister was annoying.

“Was it just bad sex?” Narcissa couldn’t stop apparently.

“No, I just didn’t like it.”

“Oo, poor Rod. I won’t tell him you said so.”

“He didn’t like it either. You know who he actually really likes fucking? Mal- Ouch!“

Andromeda slapped at her older sister under the duvet to shut her up. Bellatrix snagged her hand as it retreated and gently placed it in the narrow, warm space between them. She had been planning on saying something, but she forgot what it was entirely as her sister’s fingers interlaced with hers. 

Bellatrix spoke again, now without the previous, playful malice. “Sorry, Cissy. For all the shit I give you, I’m going to miss you both when I move into the Lestrange Manor. I’ll be around though. And when the two of you marry, I’m going throw raucous parties at your houses without asking.”

“Aww…” Narcissa waxed eloquent about something sentimental, but Andromeda couldn’t hear her over the buzzing in her ribs and the blood pumping in her ears. Gears crunched in her mind trying to weigh the possibility that Bellatrix also held their younger sister’s hand under the covers in a sweet, sisterly gesture or if… _if…_

“Are you in love with Rod?” She barely registered Narcissa’s voice.

“Are we playing 20 questions?”

“You said you’d indulge me.”

“I didn’t say that. I answered one question.”

“I really wanna know, Bella.”

Bellatrix sighed. “I love him in a way.”

“But you’re not in love with him. I wonder what it’s like to be in love.”

“…I don’t know.” The eldest Black sister trailed off and was quiet. It seemed like she was holding her breath, so Andromeda did too. “Andy, what’s it like?”

She coughed, and Bellatrix’ hand tightened around hers. “Um, well…” Her sisters waited quietly while she hesitated. “It’s still a little weird to talk to the two of you about this.”

Narcissa’s voice came softer than expected. “Ted’s nice, Andy.” She paused. “And he’s been really good for you. Everyone who knows can tell.”

“I think that’s true too.” These words in a small voice from her older sister emptied her.

She shook off the poignancy of the moment and donned a confident tone she did not feel. “It’s not like it matters, though. Nothing can come of it.”

All three of them were silent for a long time. Finally, Narcissa excused herself and planted a kiss on each of their foreheads before sweeping out. “Don’t stay up too late.”

“She’s such a mom.” Bellatrix muttered.

Andromeda chuckled and began to extract herself from the bed. “Unfortunately, she’s also often right about things.”

Her older sister’s hand tightened around her own again and anchored her. “Please stay.”

She froze on the edge of the bed, half out from the covers, a hundred unfinished thoughts racing through her mind. Bellatrix tugged at her gently before she capitulated and crawled back in next to her sister. She had to brush those heavy black curls from her face as Bellatrix rolled over to nestle into her side. For a few waking minutes, the middle Black sister was nine again, hiding in her older sister’s arms; eight years later Bellatrix’ mere presence still held frightening things at bay. They only slept, and the next morning Andromeda stirred that silvery-red magic swirling into her tea as she berated herself for the word “only.”

The day was awful. The worst headache of her life developed mid-morning and followed her through the Manor as she slung back the first shots of rum helping the elves in the kitchen, gulped from the stash of gin under her bed while she got ready, and sipped the wine in Bellatrix’ room as she zipped her sister’s dress up in the back. When Narcissa cornered her to confiscate a small bottle of vile mixed dregs from their father’s cellar, Andromeda slapped the blonde witch hard enough to leave a hand-shaped welt on her cheek, and a worried guest who poked his head out of a nearby door narrowly dodged a sloppy stinging jinx before disappearing again. She watched the beginning of the ceremony slack-jawed and awoke to her mother dragging her head up from a puddle of her own vomit in the bathroom.

**

Ted laid down his pencil and looked up from his sketch. The door chimed and was followed by a familiar voice that snarked at the muggle woman at the front of the restaurant. Those unmistakable, heavy black curls that could belong to none other than Bellatrix Black – now Lestrange – bounced as she sidestepped the protesting hostess. He folded his hands deliberately on the table in front of him while the woman helped herself to the chair across from him, crossed her legs flagrantly, and leaned both elbows on the table.

“Bellatrix.” His voice was calm; honestly, he felt calm.

“Tonks."

“Are you meeting someone here?”

“Already found him.”

They stared at each other for a few moments before he spoke again. “Congratulations on your wedding. I heard it was quite the celebration.”

“Who’d you hear that from? Not Andy. I doubt she can remember a lick of it.”

He betrayed no discomfort. “I tutor Antonin in arithmancy once a week.”

“Plot twist. Perhaps you are more interesting than I assumed.”

“Did you want to talk about something?”

“My sister.”

“Does she know you’re here to talk about her?”

“No, and I’d like to keep it that way. Ted – you won’t mind if I call you Ted, will you?” Her sycophantic smile almost cancelled out the genuineness of the question. Almost. He shook his head. “Ted, I think you should reconsider what you’re doing with her.”

“You’re here to scare me off.”

The dark-haired witch snorted. “I doubt I could scare you off if she hasn’t. I’m more concerned about you.” Ted arched his eyebrows. “Can you actually handle her?”

“I am.”

“I’ve never met anyone who could. Besides me, of course.”

“You are quite the witch.”

“She killed a house elf when she was barely nine years old.”

“I know.”

The woman recovered quickly after that unexpected reaction. “And she almost killed Karkaroff. Maybe on purpose.”

“Yes, I know. We’ve talked about it.”

“And she fucked Potter purely to spite Lily – while dating you, I think.”

“Indeed.”

“Are you mad?”

His sigh was sort of like a laugh. “It seems you think so.”

Bellatrix leaned further forward in earnest to deliver her best blow. “She’s fucking in love with me, Ted.”

“I know that too.”

“You _are_ mad.”

“Is that all you came to tell me?”

She huffed and rose from her seat. “Be careful. You know this can’t last. It seems like you're a quality wizard, and I would hate to see you broken for nothing.”

She had already turned to leave when he called after her, “I can see her magic.” She froze mid-stride. “It’s purple and gold when she’s passionate about something. It’s red and silver when she cries or wakes up hungover or talks about family. And she hates it, you know, but I think it’s beautiful. What do you think, Bellatrix?”

The woman didn’t turn back to look at him. “I think you’re in over your head.” She squared her shoulders and marched from the restaurant.

**

It turned out that it was McGonagall who had convinced Dumbledore to require Andromeda to do the special projects elective her seventh year, and it was she who took the lead on equipping the young woman for it. When Andromeda blatantly told the Gryffindor head of house that she didn’t want to do it, her complaint was brushed off entirely (“That’s too bad”). The middle Black sister consequently spent countless hours designing her own spells, drawing conclusions at the intersection of her healing research with Narcissa and the weekly herbology lab she still took with Ted. She tested combinations of potions, runes, seeds, wand flourishes, wandless flourishes, English, Spanish, a Southeast Asian language she had never heard spoken – all to devise some extravagant charm she could produce to impress a crew of hungry Ministry officials. There was nothing she abhorred more than trying to prove herself; any time she came close to achieving something she was proud of, it exploded into something ugly - usually a shower of black and blue doxies that terrorized her and anyone near her. Sometimes she practiced with McGonagall in her office, exhausted and ashamed of her outpouring of inky, dark magic by the end of the session. Sometimes it was with Ted in the Room of Requirement, where he did nothing more than wrangle the nasty little creatures between each incantation. Sometimes Narcissa sat quietly with her behind the boathouse while she repeated her words and wand movements over and over. When it turned out that channeling her patronus helped her produce more charm and less destruction, she cast the kelpie repetitively until Narcissa smugly reminded her that Bellatrix’ wand core was kelpie hair. Everyone reminded her ad nauseam that doing well on this project would get her anywhere she wanted in her career (and quickly at that); this didn’t feel like it mattered to her.

That was also about the time that Tom Riddle began courting her; initially, she couldn’t tell if it was for marriage or for business, although the two weren’t really so different in her family. She hated it, and his letters and occasional visits to Hogsmeade put her in frequent dark moods. Rumors about a growing, vocal movement to severely restrict muggleborns were substantiated by pictures in the Daily Prophet of her father and various other pureblood family heads appearing in public together to make conspiratorial and cryptic statements. While Ted’s trust in her never wavered, she could feel the warmth of her other muggleborn friends wax and wane with their anxieties. She couldn’t blame them, and the more her consternation splintered the integrity of her charms project, the more she believed they were right to be suspicious of her. Mere weeks before the presentation, the seed she was supposed to be transforming into a full-grown tree in less than two minute was rebelling against most of her efforts, which of course loaded more gloom on her. During practice sessions, sometimes the seed might turn to glass and shatter violently. It might spew out a thorny bush whose branches grew disproportionately to seize whatever or whomever was nearby. It might grow a squatty tree around which doxies chased down tiny birds and tore out their fathers until they fell to the ground dead. Every now and then it produced a delicate willow which was sturdy long enough for her to breathe a sigh of relief before its leaves erupted into flames and burned up the whole plant. She stopped seeking Narcissa’s company (and therefore support) and quit going to the sessions with McGonagall after a spate of gory enchantments turned the professor very pale one evening. Repeated petitions to the headmaster to let her back out of the project met with no success. Somehow her mother and father learned of it, and she received a sternly worded letter from each of them threatening shame and punishment if she didn’t follow through. This frightened her, even though she was pretty sure she had already endured more shame and punishment for her magic than they could ever enact on her at once. Ted, incredible man that he was, arranged for Bellatrix to meet her in the Room of Requirement each night of the last week before the project. Whether he convinced the dark-haired witch to be kind or whether she was uncommonly compassionate on her own, Andromeda did not know, but her older sister abandoned all teasing and caviling for those meetings.

The night before the presentation, Ted and Bellatrix reclined in front of a fireplace in the Room of Requirement while they watched the auburn-haired witch alternate between casting her patronus and whispering her own incantation at the walnut-sized seed on the floor with various results. Truthfully, she was doing quite well – far exceeding the quality it would take to secure an enviable sponsorship the next day. Her sister and her lover both knew that, but they shared a concern for her growing misery and the weight they could practically see on her shoulders. It was only Andromeda who could not admit the invariable beauty of each spell and the glory of the tree that rose up from the ground; she was too lost in the darkness of it, too enveloped in the things that came with it.

“You don’t deserve her,” the oldest Black sister whispered at Ted while Andromeda’s magic whirled golden around a thick, knotted tree trunk sprouting huge, bright red leaves..

“You don’t either,” was the reply. 

Bellatrix had no retort and was saved from having to invent one when her sister squished a careless doxy in her fist so that its blood burst out and slung it to the floor. The dark-haired witch frowned with a sudden idea and approached the young woman, who was now pressing her fist to her forehead with her eyes closed. She gently moved Andromeda’s hand away from her face and raised her chin up with two tender fingers.

“Look at me.” Andromeda did look. She was so tired, so dejected, and her defenses were so low. “I have an idea.”

She did not want her sister’s idea. She wanted to indulge her own need for comfort. She wanted to cry on Bellatrix’ shoulder. But she did neither of these things. 

The older witch summoned the seed and placed it in her sister’s palm. “Try the spell without your wand.”

“That’s not going to work.”

“Just try it.”

Andromeda sighed and let Bellatrix stretch her arm out into a relaxed position with the seed in her hand. The woman arranged herself at her side and pressed her fingertips lightly up underneath her forearm as if to support it. Andromeda could feel her sister’s breathing on her ear. 

“Cast it again.”

She took a deep breath and cast the spell. Warmth flooded through her arm, danced at the places her sister’s fingers met her skin, and washed through her palm into the seed. It sprouted. Its deep green shot upwards, transforming until the mighty trunk in her hand swayed with a massive crown of fresh leaves and purple flowers that stretched all the way to the ceiling. Yes, there were thorns. Yes, there were doxies. And, yes, the tree was magnificent; she couldn’t deny it. She stared at it in shock and perhaps even awe at herself. Her cheeks and ears were hot, though she couldn’t tell whether that was from the exhilaration of what she had created or Bellatrix’ hands on her wrist and waist.

“That’s it. Do that. Be that.” Bellatrix smiled something pure and excited at her, not unlike the day on the beach of the Black Lake when she had called her “wicked and wonderful.”

“But you helped. You helped cast it.”

“No, Andy. I just gave you a reason to cast it.”

Her ears were hot again, but her older sister didn’t make it into anything. She only hugged her and excused herself for the evening. 

Andromeda let Ted walk her almost all the way back to the Slytherin common room before stopping to give him a long kiss.

“What are you going to do when you receive an offer from every Ministry department tomorrow?” He asked after he caught his breath.

“I’m going to turn them all down and declare the healing track.”

“I suppose I can’t convince you otherwise.”

“Nope. But thank you, Ted. For everything.” He knew “everything” included his decision to conscript Bellatrix that week. He knew she knew how intuitive he was, and there was no reason to discuss it further than that.

**

The Great Hall was emptied of dining tables to make a large open space for the special project presentations. Andromeda was displeased to learn she would be presenting last, and even more displeased to find Riddle seated with her family in the back row – Riddle predatory, her father ugly, her mother smug, Bellatrix and Narcissa expectant. Ted hovered in the far back of the room so he could make a quick escape when needed. Most of the presentations ran together (water that boiled itself in one’s hand without burning, fires that morphed into different forms based on any viewer’s command, brooms that transformed into muggle transportation, yada yada yada), and rows of Ministry representatives and family members watched politely at best with the occasional spritz of applause at something charming. 

Her heart drummed wildly when McGonagall laid a hand on her arm to lead her to the room’s center and handed her the seed. “You are very good at this, Andromeda. Remember that.” Her professor smiled at her. “No matter what happens.”

In the open space, she felt surrounded. Surrounded by her family, by centuries of British wizardry bearing down through the castle, by the current wizarding world, by high expectations, by things she both wanted to be and didn’t want to be. She looked at the seed dumbly and drew her wand, unsettled by the inordinate hum of her magic. She broke attention momentarily to meet Bellatrix’ eyes in the audience.

Her sister’s lips moved silently. “ _Just doxies._ ”

Andromeda re-sheathed her wand, cradled the seed in her hand, stroked it once with her thumb, and spoke her incantation. It sprouted as before, shooting up with a tendril of magic that started in her core and reached the high ceiling of the Great Hall before it split and peeled outward. Branches unfurled, upon which spring leaves surrounded prominent, intimidating black thorns each accompanied by a white flower lined with pink veins. Where the branches reached the walls, they morphed into vibrant vines accentuated by flashing purple and gold. Dew beaded on the soft parts of the tree, and the branches grew heavy enough to droop over those in attendance but not low enough to threaten them. A hoard of doxies erupted from a knot halfway up the trunks as if from a hive but instead of wreaking havoc they hovered around the goldfinches that took flight from the tree’s topmost branches. The creatures flitted together jovially. One of each came to rest on her forearm, and when she looked at them curiously, they twitched their heads upward as if telling her to look up. When she obeyed, she stood transfixed as petals illuminated by soft light rained down on her without diminishing the blooms on the branches. The fullness of peace was heavy, but for once the weight was in her hands and not on her back or in her heart. She didn’t know what this was doing to or for anyone else present, but she knew what it was doing to her. She had spent her whole life needing this, so she let herself go and basked in the velvet petals, the light, and its mist cascading over her eyelashes and cheeks until she came to herself again and curled her fingers around the seed to end the spell. 

Professor McGonagall followed the young witch into the corridor when she rushed from the Great Hall with tears – not necessarily sad ones – streaming down her cheeks. Bellatrix Lestrange beat her to it, however, and she stopped short, reminded of one tender, melancholy interaction seven years ago when she had dared not interrupt them. The oldest Black sister already had her fingers threaded through Andromeda’s hair while the younger witch hung onto her arms tightly. Their foreheads were pressed together with their eyes closed, and Bellatrix tugged Andromeda’s head back and forth in an unmistakably sensual exchange. They breathed deeply together, and McGonagall made the questionable, split-second decision to turn and block excited audience members from pouring out the door and destroying their unbearable intimacy.

Andromeda’s head spun with the magic pouring from her sister and swarming her own. The air that she sucked in to steady herself from the hands entwined in her hair was thick with something she didn’t recognize and would never encounter again. 

“Andromeda.” Her voice was breathy.

_It was intoxicating; it was life-giving; it was fresh; it was ancient; it was whole; it had never not been there; it would never end; she would not let it end._

“Andromeda - ” 

It was not like Bellatrix to gasp between words, not like Bellatrix to sway unwittingly, not like Bellatrix to use her full name with such earnest, not like Bellatrix to struggle to say what she meant. 

“You – your magic can spend itself – entirely on - doxies – on anything – for the rest of your life – and that will never change – what – what you just did in there – who you are – that you are so much - better – than – the rest of - “

“Ladies.” 

They jerked away from each other so abruptly it hurt. Bellatrix snapped her mouth closed tightly and lowered her head to the floor to focus on controlling her breathing. Andromeda staggered and spun toward the voice to protect herself from the convulsion of their shattering magic.

Tom Riddle’s insipid sneer reached out to seize the middle Black sister, and her heart sank with sickness. “Congratulations, Andromeda. I am rarely impressed, but that was truly a preternatural display of magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ministry erupts into war over who gets to claim you.”

Andromeda found her tongue. “No one is going to claim me.”

Riddle smiled widely. “That’s what I thought. Your potential exceeds that of everyone in that room combined. I hope you’ll consider devoting yourself to… higher callings.”

She swallowed. “I’m going to be a healer.”

“You’re going to be a lot more than that.” With that, the sinister man disappeared.

She whirled around to find her sister again, but Bellatrix was gone. She was alone. Almost immediately, they all – except perhaps the Dark Lord – began to reimagine the sisters’ interaction to give it a more palatable explanation, but that never did change what it was, never did change that their grand, grand wickedness was also wonderful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this might have been my favorite chapter to write. It's between this one and the last one.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	10. Godforsaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This chapter includes excerpts (italicized chunks) adapted from Shards of Nuance chapters 18, 20, and 23 respectively; HOWEVER, there's a lot of other important stuff in this chapter so don't skip it if you're still along for the ride._
> 
> _Bellatrix is referencing Hannah Arendt when she says that some goodness is only real when it’s not perceived._
> 
> _**never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**_
> 
> _Now carry on with reading:_

The thing about Bellatrix was that she wasn’t always malicious and manipulating. It was that her kindness and her malice were unpredictable – even to Andromeda, who knew her better than anyone else did in those days. The dark-haired witch also had an uncanny ability to show someone genuine kindness and simultaneously still be malicious to them, and undoubtedly this ability was honed at her middle sister’s expense. For instance, the next time that Andromeda saw her older sister after their interaction at her Charms final project would be its antithesis and would become the memory she spent the most effort trying to erase ever after.

_For Andromeda’s 18th birthday, Druella brought her and Narcissa home from Hogwarts for the weekend to celebrate. It was truly an excellent party, and she almost forgave her mother for inviting too many potential suitors. Rod, Bellatrix, and their friends, two years graduated, crashed the party late in the evening and made a big deal out of celebrating and pestering her._

_She wanted to enjoy it; really, she did. Instead, she spent the whole night burying herself in more drinks and trying to hide how much she was watching her older sister radiate mirth. Bellatrix’ perfect lips were undeniably delicious when she threw her head back with laughter that trilled and thrilled - surely everyone thought so. Bellatrix was everywhere, and so was the cinnamon-sweet heat deep inside the middle Black sister when Bellatrix slid her arm around her shoulders to peck her on the cheek, or when Bellatrix danced lasciviously on the stairs, or when Bellatrix did anything really._

_At one point, her dark-haired sister nearly stopped her heart when she shoved her down onto the armchair, snatched a bottle from Rod’s hand and climbed onto her lap. She ran her hand through Andromeda’s hair, grasped its roots and dragged her head backwards to gain unfettered access to her open mouth. The dark-haired witch poured the clear liquor in excess into her sister’s mouth, perhaps most pleased when it splashed over her face when she shook her head in feeble protest. Andromeda knew she let it go on for too long before making Bellatrix stop. She came up long enough to see her older sister smirking, just to have her head forced back into position again after a moment’s rest._

_When she took control of the situation and exploded the bottle in her sister’s hand, sending glass and alcohol spattering over them both, Bellatrix laughed and bent down to enunciate, “You’re so_ fun _.” At least she left her alone after that._

_After the party, Andromeda put herself to bed with the fullest bottle of firewhiskey she could find, planning to drown the fire in her belly with it until she forgot her older sister or died - whichever came first._

_Neither happened. Instead, she found herself swaying down the dark hallway that led to Bellatrix’ room in her underwear and one of Ted’s t-shirts. She was humming some off-key ditty that she didn’t know when she was sober, stopping only to curse colorfully when she tripped over nothing and crashed into the wall. The doorknob to Bellatrix’ room loomed in front of her, dancing in and out of focus; she swiped at it and missed._

_Thin pale fingers gently seized her wrist. “Hey, what are you doing?” Her younger sister was at her side whispering._

_“M’ goin to see Bella.” Their older sister had decided to stay the night at the Manor instead of returning to her own home._

_“What do you need?”_

_“I juss wanna talk t’hr.” She slurred something fierce._

_“Why?”_

_“S’none of your business, Cisthy.”_

_An irritating look of realization dawned on her blonde sister’s face followed by one of stern warning. “Andy, this is a bad idea. You’re drunk.”_

_“M not drink.”_

_Bellatrix appeared in her now open doorway. She had an insufficient blanket wrapped loosely around her, revealing her naked shoulders and cleavage draped with those silky black curls that were dashing even when unkempt. “What’s a bad idea? You know I love those. Especially when they involve you, Andy.” She winked._

_She lurched toward Bellatrix, but Narcissa caught her around the waist with both arms. “Nope, nope, nope. You need to go to bed.”_

_“B’lla, I wan turk, thalk, talk to you.”_

_“You can talk in the morning. Not right now.” Narcissa tugged at her waist._

_Bellatrix looked at her curiously, a small smile flitting on face. “Did our baby girl finally grow a pair?”_

_“Bella!” Narcissa’s voice was sharp._

_Her older sister stepped forward. “I am very interested to hear what all that liquid courage has you dying to say to me.”_

_“You are not helping!” Narcissa spat at the careless, smirking woman before planting herself firmly between them._

_“Le’mme in, Bell. I want yy– “ Her desperate whine was cut off by Narcissa’s hand forcefully clamping over her mouth._

_“It’s time for you to go to bed.” Narcissa’s firm but gentle shove sent her reeling backwards, her legs as unsteady from Bellatrix’s triumphant leering and low chuckle as from the alcohol._

_“Go ‘way, Cissy.”_

_“Don’t make me stupefy you, Andy. I swear to the gods.” Narcissa corralled her back down the hallway away from their older sister, catching her repeatedly when she tripped over her own feet._

_She woke up in her own bed the next morning, surrounded by a silvery-red self-loathing. She returned to Hogwarts without seeing her older sister. The next time they did see each other, Andromeda was already pregnant._

**

In fact, Andromeda even saw Tom Riddle before she saw Bellatrix again. In hindsight, she couldn’t remember why she agreed to meet him in the Room of Requirement, and she would always wonder exactly how many and what magnitude of mistakes she made that night.

_“I said no, Riddle, and I meant it.” She glared into the fireplace and felt her magic loom as tall as the man behind her._

_“Andromeda. Be reasonable.”_

_“I am. I’m doing what’s right.”_

_“You’re making excuses. You know you’re being held back – Hogwarts, your father, your sisters - yes, your sisters - your pureblood advantages, all of it holds you back. Don’t add a falsely superior moral code to the mix.”_

_The woman stiffened. “Don’t patronize me.”_

_“I’m speaking the truth, and you know it. Your power far exceeds the rest of your family, probably anyone you know. You deserve to use it to its fullest.”_

_“I’ll use it the way I see fit.”_

_“You aren’t using it. It’s using you. I’ve watched it crush you unnecessarily for the last three years. It’ll destroy you if you keep repressing it like this – just like it has generations of Blacks, only for you it’ll be worse.”_

_“Riddle! I know you’re a fucking halfblood. Don’t use my own blood status against me.”_

_The man chuckled. “The irony...”_

_Andromeda turned, looking as if she were considering spitting at him. “Your cause is evil. Your manipulation is awful. You will fail, because you are wrong.”_

_“But I am not wrong about you, Andromeda. You are the apotheosis of the House of Black. You can be the future of wizarding Britain if you join me. I am not so arrogant as to deny that you could command the allegiance of the people far more than I ever will.”_

_A smoky desire rumbled in her chest, but, “I will never try to.”_

_“Then you’re wasting yourself.” The man’s irritation split through. “All that magic, look at it flowing from you even now. All that magic wasted on someone who’s too weak to use it. You know who wouldn’t waste it? Bellatrix.”_

_“Bella wouldn’t join you either!”_

_“Come now, don’t lie to yourself. She finds that kind of power highly appealing. I would be disappointed to have her instead of you, but she’ll suffice if necessary.”_

_“Stay the fuck away from her.”_

_“I will if you join me.”_

_“That’s not how this is going to go. You’re not going to blackmail me.”_

_The man sneered. “You know she’ll accept the offer, and, though she’s strong, you know her magic won’t be able to withstand the sheer force of mine the way yours can. I’ll make her legendary, yes, but she won’t make it. If you really cared about her, then you wouldn’t deny me.”_

_“You’re wrong! I do! I swear, Riddle, if you - ” Andromeda spluttered._

_But he interrupted her as he exited the room. “I’ll give you one more chance.”_

_“Stay the fuck away from her!” Andromeda screamed as magic slammed in a tidal wave against the wall in the direction of his receding back._

**

Narcissa didn’t know about Riddle’s propositions to her middle sister, but she did know that Andromeda didn’t get healthier or happier after the amazing success of her Charms presentation as one would have expected. The birthday party incident could have been written off if Andromeda didn’t disappear almost entirely for the rest of the semester to spend the majority of her time with Ted and his friends. It worried the young blonde witch, but she didn’t know how or what to address – so she made the classic error of addressing nothing at all.

She regretted it almost immediately after Andromeda graduated, the fourth day Bellatrix visited the Manor for tea. She was distracted that day, because for whatever reason she had finally caught the attention of her eldest sister’s magnanimous banter, and, just like everyone else, it was hard for her to resist it. She wished she had been paying more attention to her middle sister instead though, because when Andromeda’s timid voice came, it fell through the sisters like a sledgehammer. 

_“I’m pregnant.”_

_Silence. Their spoons ceased. Their hands ceased. Their merriment ceased._

_“Your jokes aren’t funny.” Bellatrix tried to sound annoyed but wouldn’t lift her gaze from her tea._

_“I’m not joking. I found out two weeks ago.” More silence. Narcissa, normally so composed, squirmed in her seat. “Ted and I are engaged.”_

_“Oh my god, Andy.” Bellatrix pressed her fingers into the middle of her forehead._

_“The wedding will be soon so that mother and father can’t – “_

_“You won’t. You know this can’t happen. You said it yourself.” Narcissa was irritated._

_“I’ve changed my mind.”_

_“Andy, this is madness.” Bella finally looked at her middle sister with a desperate concern._

_“It’s madness to put up with Father’s shit about pureblood supremacy. It’s madness to suffer Riddle’s presence and the lies he’s feeding us.”_

_“Father won’t let you. He will make it miserable for you, and for us too, I bet.” The blonde girl, just finished with her fifth year at Hogwarts, tried to ward off a new, stalking fear. “He might do anything to you.”_

_“I can handle him.”_

_“He might kill you.”_

_“He’s not that far gone.”_

_“He is, though. Please don’t do this.” Their oldest sister was begging, something Narcissa had never seen her do. “This would change everything. There would be no going back.”_

_“I don’t want to go back, Bella.”_

_The dark-haired young woman flinched as if she’d been slapped. “Just wait. Just think a little more about it before you do something you can’t undo. Please. For us. For me.”_

_Andromeda gazed at their older sister with an emotion that Narcissa couldn’t place._

**

They sat on the short stone wall at the back of the Lestrange hunting lodge throwing pebbles into a nearby puddle. Andromeda had jumped at her older sister’s invitation to get away from the Black Manor even though she knew Bellatrix’ motives mostly had to do with trying to change her mind about marrying Ted. The Manor was becoming heavier by the day, as if it were weighed down with the child growing in inside her. She was afraid it would expose her somehow, and she hadn’t quite decided yet how she was going to handle the situation.

“Being married isn’t even that great, you know. It’s not like Rod and I act any different. He just gets through the blood wards and doesn’t have to take out any loans.” Bellatrix wasn’t exactly scowling, but her pebbles splashed petulantly in the water.

“Pretty good deal for him.” Andromeda’s hands were curled around the stone by her thighs.

“Better deal for him than for me. Except that no one bugs me.”

“So bleak.”

“Which is why marriage isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. You won’t get anything better out of marrying Ted.”

“It’s a different thing, Bella. It’s different to marry for love rather than for wealth and power.” She laughed. “Can you even imagine that?”

Bellatrix wasn’t as amused. “I just don’t get why you would even think about marrying him when there are easier options.”

“Like what?”

“Like giving him the kid, marrying a pureblood like you’re supposed to, and keeping him around on the side. That’s not even unusual for a pureblood woman these days. No one would think twice about it.”

The auburn-haired witch shook her head. “You’re right. You really don’t get it. I don’t want to do things like a pureblood. I don’t think what we do is right.” 

“You can’t escape it, Andy. Being a pureblood will follow you wherever you go. Your magic will follow you wherever you go. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“No.” _Surely, it was partly about the magic though, wasn’t it?_ “I just want to be with someone that I love and who loves me.”

Bellatrix deflated visibly, which made Andromeda’s heart sink a little. “At the expense of people who already love you?”

“That’s not fair to say...”

“It’s how it is, though. Sure, Mother and Father leave something to be desired. But the rest of us… the house elves love you despite everything. And Cissy adores you. And Rod. And I…” She puffed out her cheeks and wagged her head. “I don’t know how…” She trailed off.

“You’re making this hard.”

“I want it to be hard.”

That angered Andromeda as much as it wounded her. “I’m not giving you up - you or the family. Quit acting like it.”

“You are. You’re trading us... for what? For nothing you couldn’t have anyway.”

The auburn-haired woman let out a frustrated snarl as she sprung from her perch to face her sister. “Bellatrix! I love Ted! You’ve accepted that part. But I have more family now. What about having a human growing inside my body can you not comprehend?”

“There are very obvious and simple ways to fix that.”

Andromeda whipped her hand up and slapped her older sister across the face. Her lip curled, and her hissed words simmered with fury. “How dare you suggest that. How dare you act like you can tell me what to do with my body and my child and my goddamn life.”

Bellatrix’ eyes watered as she blinked at the ground in disbelief. Her tongue tanged metallic, and when she patted her hand against her lips, her fingers came away spotted with blood. She kept her eyes averted. This moment wasn’t like the day that her middle sister had beaten her in that bloodthirsty duel. Andromeda had just struck her while perfectly lucid. 

The younger witch’s voice came again after a short silence. “I don’t want this.” Her voice broke. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life arguing with you about how to live it. I don’t want to have to prove myself worthy of the Black family magic. I don’t want to keep struggling with myself about what is right and how to be good.”

“Andy, you are good. You are dark, and you are good. Why the hell can you not see that those things aren’t mutually exclusive?” Bellatrix made a strong argument considering that she believed this even when Andromeda had just hit her unprovoked.

The middle Black sister sighed. “It’s easier for me to believe I’m good when I’m with Ted – easier for me to see it.” She could tell every statement she made was hurting her sister, but she just couldn’t stop.

“Some goodness only exists when it’s not perceived.”

“But I want to be able to see it, Bella. I want to be able to feel it.”

“I have been trying to help you do that for forever.” The dark-haired witch dropped her head further into a forlorn whisper that exposed something the middle Black sister wished she had been privy to before all this had happened. “I don’t want you to go.”

“You are the only reason I have thought twice about this. Don’t you know that?” Andromeda closed her eyes and wished it weren’t true.

“Please think about it a little longer.” Bellatrix thumbed her lip. This irritated the wound, and more blood seeped across the creases in her soft skin.

When the auburn-haired witch opened her eyes again, her sister was still avoiding looking at her and was smudging her face in an attempt to keep the blood from dripping down her chin. More dreadful feelings welled up, shame most prominently. “I’m sorry.” Sorrier than she could express. 

“It’s ok.” It wasn’t, but they both wanted it to be. “You didn’t mean it.” She had, but neither of them would admit it.

“Let me fix it?” When Bellatrix hesitated, Andromeda almost whined. “This is the only thing I’m really good at.” 

Her older sister relented and let her hold her head still with firm fingers braced around her jaw and behind her ear while she coated her fingers with pollen from a wilting weed she pulled up from a crack in the stone.

“Whatever happened to a simple episkey?” Bellatrix mumbled through her sister’s thumb pressing up on her lip from below the wound.

“Do you want this to scar? No? Then let me do it my way.” She peered at the wound with great concentration while she pushed the blood back up into the wound and then pinched the skin shut over the top of it.

When she released her grip, Bellatrix rubbed her lip, surprised with how smooth it was. Later, she would wonder if she would rather have had the scar to remind her of that day.

“I really am sorry.” Andromeda was desperate to not have done what she did.

“Please promise me you’ll think about it more.”

She sighed again. Her guilt made her lie. “I promise.”

**

“Get your sister upstairs and out of sight.” 

Druella seized her youngest daughter by the upper arm. She had been leading a small group of people on a grandstanding tour through the Manor when she had abruptly whipped around to stand in a doorway, block their view into the room, and direct them to refreshments waiting in the library. Narcissa had been trailing behind them to observe and internally critique her mother’s poise and hospitality, but now Druella was hissing in her face. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Andromeda. Andromeda is always wrong. Get her upstairs, get her sober, get her out of those despicable muggle clothes – actually, I don’t care. I couldn’t care less if she’s absolutely trashed and looks like a mudblood whore. I just don’t want to see her downstairs or anywhere near our meeting with the ambassadors from Spain. I don’t even want to see her until tomorrow. Do you understand?”

Narcissa kept her composure and nodded. “Yes, Mother.” 

She didn’t bother these days to remind her mother that muggle fashion was becoming more and more common amongst her generation of purebloods; there was no arguing with her on most topics related to muggles. There was also no way Andromeda was drunk since she was so adamant about her pregnancy and engagement to Ted. But when her mother moved away and she was left peering into the room, there was her middle sister slumped against the side of the fireplace, eyes closed, with a half glass of something light red dangling precariously in one hand and her favorite black collared shirt unbuttoned almost to her stomach and soaked on the left side. Bellatrix sat on the armchair across from her with her legs crossed, also holding a glass but much more composed, appraising her with a sullen, unfriendly gaze.

Narcissa furrowed her brow and approached them cautiously. Andromeda opened her eyes once to mumble something at her, and her eldest sister directed her stare towards her, daring her to confront them. She knew better. “Help me get her upstairs before Mother loses her mind on her.”

Bellatrix complied. They left both glasses on the mantle, and half carried Andromeda up to her room before helping her change and get into bed. They shared no meaningful words until they were back out in the hallway and had closed their middle sister’s door.

Narcissa’s blue eyes flashed, and it was the first time they made Bellatrix shift uncomfortably. “What the hell was that?”

“We were just hanging out.”

“Having a drink.”

“Yes, that’s what Andy likes to do. Obviously.”

“There are so many things wrong with this situation.” Narcissa was angrier than either she or Bellatrix expected her to be. “You are awful to her. You’re awful for her.”

Bellatrix gave her a haughty disdainful face. “Shut up. I didn’t make her drink. She’s responsible for her own actions – not me.”

“There is no way she is drinking while pregnant with her fucking lovechild without you prompting her.”

“Then perhaps you should be thanking me.”

“I am not going to thank you for manipulating her and taking advantage of her drinking problem and her weird shit with you. Let her live her life the way she wants.”

“I’m not going to let her fuck everything up.”

“So you’re willing to fuck her up in the process?”

“Don’t lecture me, Narcissa.”

“She wouldn’t treat you like this.”

“I said don’t lecture me.”

They stared at each other for a few moments before the younger witch spoke again. “Find a better way to show you care about her and deal with the fact that she’s probably going to leave. And go home to your own house. I’ll deal with her for now.”

Finally, Bellatrix spun on her heels and stalked off down the corridor. Narcissa lift her chin with narrowed eyes until her sister was out of sight and realized that somewhere down the line it was going to be up to her to save her family’s reputation.

**

_Their father was standing with the newly self-styled Dark Lord at the end of the conference table in Grimmauld Place in front of the family tree tapestry. Druella, Walburga, and Orion sat near them wearing ugly, smug satisfaction. Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa were all seated at the other end of the table, bored but on edge. They were always on edge in Grimmauld Place. Bellatrix said it was because she could see the magic circling between Andromeda and its walls; Narcissa couldn’t see it but noted that her middle sister always ground her teeth when visiting the house, a habit she didn’t exhibit elsewhere._

_“Andromeda, come here.” Their father’s voice boomed._

_Their middle sister stood hesitantly and made her way around the table, stopping a little too far away from him to be considered obedient. “Yes?”_

_“Lord Voldemort and I have made a strategic arrangement for the family and our cause.” He paused for effect. “You will marry Alaric Selwyn at the end of the summer.”_

_Druella and Walburga looked particularly pleased. The Dark Lord peered triumphantly at the auburn-haired woman. Her jaw clenched and unclenched, lips forming words that did not come out. Narcissa and Bellatrix coiled their muscles with the greatest hope of their lives – that she would not protest. But Andromeda did not show any sign of acquiescing._

_“Bella, she’s going to ruin it.” Narcissa whispered._

_“No, she won’t.” Her oldest sister did not look as confident as her words sounded._

_“Bella, it’s happening.”_

_“No, it’s not.” The dark-haired witch’s denial was horrendous._

_Andromeda took a deep breath before blurting out, “I can’t!” A collective sucking in of breath passed around the room. “I’m engaged.”_

_Narcissa clenched her eldest sister’s forearm under the table in fear and desperation; Bellatrix went pale._

_It was Walburga who asked it. “Engaged? To whom exactly, dear niece?”_

_“Edward Tonks.” It was the most confident Narcissa ever remembered her sister sounding._

_“Tonks. I don’t know Tonks. Sounds like a mudblood.” Walburga snapped her head toward the sisters. “Narcissa. Is Tonks a mudblood?”_

_She swallowed and nodded, her fingernails digging into Bellatrix’ skin._

_There was silence before their father’s rage, but when rage came it sprinkled spittle on the family’s shocked faces. "YOU! You good for nothing bitch! Druella, I want him gone.”_

_Narcissa felt her fingernails break Bellatrix’ skin as their sister continued. “I’m going to marry him. I’m pregnant.”_

_Their father screamed violently. “Fucking cunt whoring yourself out to a mudblood! You are a waste of Black blood; you always have been. No more!” He drew his wand._

_Narcissa began to panic. “Bella, he’s going to kill her!”_

_Andromeda raised her wand to block a spell as she stumbled backward. Another curse and another. The room’s other occupants began ducking to avoid stray unforgivables._

_“Bella, you have to do something! He’s going to kill her!” Indeed, there were now killing curses punctuating the air._

_Andromeda was almost to the door, ragged with cursed wounds, when Bellatrix threw her chair back and leapt onto the table, intercepting spells in flight and sucking them into the tip of her wand. She slashed her wand at her father, slamming his body like a ragdoll into the tapestry behind him where he slumped bleeding from the back of the head. Then she turned toward Andromeda and with no hesitation cast a bombarda maxima that propelled her out of the room and exploded the stone wall into flying chunks that barricaded the door with rubble. At first, Narcissa thought she heard screaming, but a chill descended on her when she realized it was her dark-haired sister laughing as she hexed everyone in the room who drew their wands against her. Plates and family heirloom wine glasses shattered against the floor, chairs, flesh, and portraits whose occupants ducked for cover. When Bellatrix reached the tapestry, she wound up her arm and delivered an incendio at Andromeda’s name; the auburn-haired sister’s ever-stunning portrait went up in flames that left a black mark on the ceiling._

_The dark witch hoisted their father up by the hair to look at her handiwork. “No need to kill her, father. She’s not even part of the family.”_

_When she dropped him, his mouth smeared the tapestry with blood. Facing the rest of the room’s dumbfounded occupants, she wiped her hand on the old tablecloth and giggled._

**

On the other side of the door, Andromeda dragged herself up from the ground while wiping debris from eyes. She kicked at a piece of stone that was crushing her foot against the wall, scraped herself together, registered her sister’s maniacal cackle behind the rubble, and took off hobbling down the corridor. When she rounded the corner into the portrait hall, she collided with a solid young man who groaned and thumped to the side. Her cousin’s voice (“what the hell – “) captured no response from her as she careened wildly away from him without regaining her balance and faceplanted into a wet substance on a framed canvas. A sinister hissing filled her ears as she placed her hands on it to shove herself away from the malevolent sneer of Ashlys Black. The hissing turned to a sickening chuckle when her fingers caught in the place where their blood leaked from the canvas and ripped the wound open wider in her hurried retreat. By the time she exited Grimmauld Place’s front door, the portrait’s cacophony would have driven anyone mad.

Andromeda landed roughly in the middle of Platform 9 ¾, narrowly missing a couple materializing at the brick wall. They gave her dirty looks when she bumped one of their shoulders as she rushed through the brick, feeling for all the world that she was pushing out of one life into another – hopefully another. In muggle King’s Cross, she panicked and apparated again, this time to the first place that inconveniently crossed her mind: the door of a nightclub her friends had taken her to a few years ago in their crusade to educate a sympathetic member of the most notorious pureblood family in typical muggle culture. The throng at the club’s entrance roared with disapproval when she appeared at the front of their line, so she disapparated again, recklessly aiming for a parking lot near Ted’s house that she only vaguely remembered. A wrenching sensation in her lower leg barely registered while she staggered into the street, hailed a cab, and rode a few blocks before hopping out abruptly without paying. She limped away from the driver’s angry shouts towards the Tonks residence. Her leg dragged up the front steps until she leaned against the front door and pounded on it with a fist still wrapped around her wand. Everything about her shook as she warbled guttural words.

“Ted! Ted! Are you there? Ted! Open the door!” She choked and tasted sticky, salty tears on her lips. “Sandra, it’s Andromeda! Please let me in!” When the door opened suddenly, she pitched forward into the figure behind it. 

Ted’s mother, Sandra, caught her around the waist. “Andromeda? Hey, hey. Come in.” The woman scanned the street before shutting the door, locking it, and helping her son’s fiancé to a seat in the dining room. “What’s going on?” She knelt on the floor in front of her, brushing those soft waves away from the young woman’s face.

Andromeda’s voice came in short bursts between harsh breaths. “My family… I told them. I told my parents… about Ted… that I’m pregnant.” 

Sandra appraised the young woman quickly, the sizzling wounds on her shoulders and the blood leaking from her lower leg made her heart drop low. “What happened, Andy?”

"My father…. I ran…. He tried to kill me.”

Sandra winced and shook her head. “No. Surely not.” Her voice was soft, and she already knew she was believing the young woman despite her own hopeful words.

Andromeda nodded with her eyes closed. “He used… he used the killing curse. More than once.”

Sandra’s heart trembled, and she wrapped the witch in an embrace and stroked her hair while cooing at her to breathe. After the young woman began to calm, she pulled away to inspect the magical wounds. “Do I need to call an ambulance? Or your hospital? Or can we handle it here?”

“If you can show me the potions ingredients Ted has here, I think I can walk you through how to do it.”

Andromeda was impressive; Sandra wouldn’t deny that. She healed her own wounds and strategized her subsequent plan of care. She kept herself more or less together until Ted got home and the next morning appeared at breakfast pale and rather fragile but as regal as the stories of her heritage suggested. She was beautiful, talented, kind, and gentle, and there was, of course, no way Ted – or any man in his right mind, Sandra thought – could resist her. Still, there was some lingering sense of shame, gloom, and sometimes a tinge of purple that hung about the witch that had existed even before the incident with her father. It gave her a terribly foreboding feeling, but she didn’t know how to bring that up with her son. Even if she did, she was fairly sure she couldn’t change anything that was coming.

**

Andromeda and Ted relocated to his sister’s house almost immediately, since she lived in a more suburban and unassuming neighborhood. Not long after, the young witch paid an emergency visit to Gringotts, where she nearly fainted when the nasty goblin refused her access to the Black vault and instead summoned security guards to throw her out for attempting to rob the House of Black. Weeks passed where she sent her patronus or an owl countless times to either Bellatrix or Narcissa, never receiving a reply. Most nights, Ted held her while she cried herself to sleep. When she finally ventured back into public socially, it was with small increments of Ted’s friends – which meant Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, including Kingsley, Remus, Alice, Frank, and (unfortunately) now James and Lily. Still, it was better to be seen than to go unacknowledged, and she learned to care about them, albeit more slowly than they did her. Occasionally, she ran into the odd pureblood who gave her a wide berth and disgusted glare, but this was rather rare since the friend group tended to avoid places that purebloods frequented.

The day she equally dreaded and hoped for came late in the summer when she was perhaps finally beginning to be comfortable with her new friends. They were seated in the sun outside a new café in Diagon Alley across from a ritzy robe shop and bookstore. She was staring past Kingsley while he rattled off stats about a new wave of innovative wand cores when a familiar pile of black curls peeked over the hanging plants in front of the robe shop. Tumultuous thoughts eclipsed her, and her hands constricted around her cup. She must have missed a comment directed at her because she was vaguely aware of her friends growing quiet and following her gaze to the other two Black sisters emerging from the storefront. The women moved nonchalantly through rows of bookshelves set up in the street to divert Hogwarts students from cluttering the inside shop. Bellatrix eventually stopped and stood tapping her foot impatiently while Narcissa searched for her textbooks. 

Andromeda was out of her seat before she realized it, ignoring Kingsley’s and Alice’s warning protests trailing behind her. She crossed the street quickly, dodging a few customers to arrive breathlessly in front of her sisters. When they looked at her, blank looks dropped like curtains over their faces, obscuring any clue as to their thoughts or emotions. Dread plummeted through her stomach.

“H-hey. Can – can we talk?” She stuttered.

There was a lingering moment where anything was possible, and Andromeda somehow knew it was that moment that she should wish would never end. Narcissa’s uncharacteristically dull eyes put the first crack in her hope. Bellatrix gritted her jaw tightly for a fraction of a moment but said nothing. Her eyes slid without expression across her middle sister as the young blonde linked arms with her and pulled her away into the street.

Andromeda’s chest clenched around her shrinking lungs. The dread was now raking through her. She ran after them, shoving aside the stray witch and wizard who wandered in her way. It drew more attention than those on the street would have otherwise given the interaction, and by the time she positioned herself in front of her sisters again there was a small crowd gathered to watch.

“Please talk to me. It’ll just be a minute. I promise.” She reached out to touch Narcissa’s forearm.

The young witch twitched, shook Andromeda’s touch off, and with a cold stare and a raised chin said, “The House of Black doesn’t associate with blood traitors.” 

Andromeda’s eyes flew open wide and her jaw dropped. Her sisters parted and skirted either side of her as they passed, taking great care not to let any part of them brush against with her. She whirled around to see them come back together and stride on without a single backward glance.

“Bella!” She pleaded, her voice high and desperate through the street, but her older sister gave no indication of hearing her. Andromeda stood rooted in place, watching her sisters steadily recede into Diagon Alley while the crowd’s mounting whispers roared in her ears. 

Incredibly, it was Lily Potter who appeared at her side to gently take her hand. Her voice was quiet and careful. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere else.” The muggleborn put a protective arm around the pureblood witch and ushered her off the street, away from prying eyes and flashing cameras.


	11. Upward Over the Mountain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next were initially meant to be just one, but I wanted to create a feeling of distance between them.  
> Also - I just made some edits to chapter 1, if you're still around and want to look. Perhaps a couple others down the line.  
> (and, yes, a nod to Iron and Wine in this chapter title)
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**

The summer incident in Diagon Alley was the first of several times Andromeda saw Bellatrix after she ran away - though many years later after the Second Wizarding War was over, she would lie to Hermione Granger and say she never did after the incident in Grimmauld Place’s tapestry room until Bellatrix stormed the Ministry during the final death eater trials. The truth was that she was not particularly proud of who she was during that time (she had many names for her early twenties: Nymphadora’s most formative years, the Dark Lord’s rise, the years before Bellatrix was sent to Azkaban, her struggle with addiction, her emergency room management at St. Mungo’s…). She spent a great deal of her later life trying to convince herself that those years weren’t especially relevant to the way things turned out, although they clearly were. It wasn’t that they were meaningless or uniformly bleak or that she wasn’t better off than she had been before in most ways. It was just one long battle between someone she didn’t want to be – longing for her sisters and for the fullness of her magic – and someone she was trying to be – a mother, a wife, more than a pureblood, and rid of the mental and emotional decay her magic wrought in her. She didn’t truly make peace with these things until the Black family empire was resurrected after the war, but in her most honest moments she knew she made the greatest leaps of progress while Bellatrix was locked away in Azkaban. But not before.

Definitely not before.

**

Andromeda and Ted initially moved into Frank and Alice’s apartment at their invitation, and though she couldn’t shake the darkness that loomed over her, there were a few moments every now and then where she could forget what had happened. Nymphadora was born there, and it was James and Lily (of all people) who stepped up to be her godparents. When she finally gave in to their mercy, it was surprising how quickly her lurking guilt disappeared. Kingsley, who was quickly becoming Ted’s best friend, frequented the house regularly since he - along with James, Frank, and Alice - had been admitted into the auror academy, and they practiced incessantly to uphold their vow to stay at the very top of their training class. Their dueling amused her, and although their nagging to join them was annoying, she found it pleasant to nurse a glass of firewhiskey while watching. The combination of the silky cinnamon taste in her mouth and nostrils with the excitement of recreational dueling did remind her of Bellatrix, but after months of no contact from her sisters turned into a year and more, such reminders stopped being so jarring. Maybe their friends’ dueling practice was when she felt the least melancholy. She was hired on at St. Mungo’s and progressed quickly into its leadership, surrounded by whispers that she was on track to be a department head in just a few years. Ted started a fledgling broom manufacturing business, and his brooms gained recognition from several professional quidditch teams rather quickly. She began to feel as if they might actually be able to pull themselves out of the pit she had dug for them. Miraculously, after two long years with the Longbottoms, they saved enough money to move into their own house just outside of muggle London.

She was good at her job – that was something. She worked well under pressure, of course (most healers did). but also maintained authentic compassion under pressure while still managing to be efficient and effective. She tended wounds with as much attention as she did surgeries, spent extra time with patients when resetting or regrowing bones, called mothers, wrote letters for patients to their children, ordered flowers and cakes for long term patients, read books to sleepless patients on her night shifts, arranged for clandestine visits by muggle family members, paid bills for patients who could not pay out of her own salary, helped family members throw ‘welcome home’ parties for their loved ones, helped grieving family members with funeral arrangements, pioneered cutting-edge surgical equipment and practices, covered shifts for subordinate employees, led interns successfully through highly technical procedures they had not been given clearance for, and many more things. It was rumored that she even revenge-dueled the abusive boyfriend of a woman who had spent several weeks recovering in the long-term unit while the Ministry dallied with her case before dismissing the charges against the man entirely. In those early years, only once did she feel like she failed wholly and completely in her role, and that was the day her co-worker’s son died during an emergency heart surgery in which she accidentally tapped on the wrong node during a complex spell weave for a life-threatening arrhythmia. After repeated attempts to gather herself sufficiently to break the news to the boy’s father and breaking down in tears each time she reached the door to the family waiting room, she called Ted and bawled into his chest until he took it upon himself to deliver the news for her. But no one – not even the grieving father – held it against her. She was reputed for her capacity and willingness to give and give for others; if there was anyone who didn’t respect her, they kept it to themselves.

It was when the muggle attacks began that things fell apart again. Around the time Nymphadora began to show signs of being a metamorphmagus, the Potters’ and the Longbottoms’ dinner visits began to be dominated by news of violent conflicts with masked wizards who were stalking, burning, or bombarding muggles or their homes with dark spells. When aurors and badly injured muggles alike began being brought to St. Mungo’s on emergency visits, it was Andromeda who was tasked with dealing with them, largely because of her reputable discretion but also because she was the best at identifying obscure spells and navigating leftover dark magic. It took a quick toll on her: her dreams began to be haunted by masks, the Dark Lord’s hissing voice, and her older sister’s chilling, maniacal laughter; Ted woke her at least once a week to silence the distressed sounds she made in her sleep. The longer the attacks wen on, the more intolerable watching their friends’ dueling games became (“how can you jackasses play this fucking game in my living room when two aurors lost limbs to the same spells last week?”) so she took to leaving the house whenever they started. She still heard nothing from her sisters, and she had long since stopped trying to contact them except for the odd night after too many drinks when Ted wasn’t home or when the dueling games went too late into the night.

It was one such evening when she apparated to King’s Cross to stroll aimlessly through muggle London streets, brooding about a whole mountain of things. A sliver of a building squished between two larger establishments caught her eye. Mold obscured rotting paint on red brick, but with a little squinting she could make out the word “spirits”. Rotting spirits seemed rather fitting to her, so she let herself in and climbed the stairs to the second story where a long, narrow bar filled most of the room. She was already halfway onto a barstool when she noticed the long tresses of impossibly black curls at the far end of the bar. She froze; her throat felt suddenly very narrow. She remained unmoving, still halfway off the stool, until a scowling bartender approached her.

“You want a drink or are you just here to ogle?”

“Uh, no – I mean, yes. To a drink.” Her goddamn words stumbled. “Whiskey, with water. Whatever your well is.”

Perhaps it was her stumbling words. Perhaps it was her apologetic drink order. Perhaps it was the unique dark-honey quality that her family always said filled her voice when she got especially serious. Whatever it was, it raised Bellatrix’ searching, charcoal eyes to find her. Andromeda ducked her head.

When her drink appeared, she paid and left a tip far exceeding the price of the drink. The liquid was challenging to swallow. When she dared to look up again, Bellatrix was staring at her with something she hoped was wistfulness, but she didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to figure it out or come up with a reaction that felt reasonable to her. She fidgeted, chewed on her nails, finally choked down her drink, and returned the way she came without another glance across the bar. She had just reached the landing between the first and second floor when she heard her name called from the top of the stairs.

“Andy!” Bellatrix’ voice was just how she remembered it – almost.

The auburn-haired witch turned slowly to see her older sister descending the stairs to her. When she reached the landing, they faced each other awkwardly – not far enough apart to suggest enmity but not close enough to do justice to whatever their relationship had been before. The milky light from the translucent window gave the eldest Black sister’s face and charcoal eyes an eerie glow.

“Bella?” Andromeda’s whisper was small and timid.

Bellatrix crossed the awkward distance to wrap her in a full embrace. Their bodies pressed together with a heavy weariness and an equally weighty relief. Andromeda buried her face in her sister’s neck and let her hot tears run down their skin. They stood together for what felt a long time until a slamming door downstairs alerted them to someone else’s presence, and they pulled apart hastily, hiding their faces until they were alone again.

“I hear you’re doing exceptionally well at St. Mungo’s.”

Andromeda almost laughed at the triviality of the statement but didn’t because of her sister’s solemnity. “It keeps me busy.” She paused. “How is Rod?” What a ridiculous thing to ask right now.

“He’s ok. The Dark Lord is getting to him.”

“Is he getting to you too?”

“He gives me what I want.”

Andromeda already knew what that was. _Power, permission, usefulness._ “Can you leave?”

“I wouldn’t want to.”

The auburn-haired woman nodded and exhaled deeply. “What about Cissy?”

“She married Malfoy.” That wasn’t exactly an answer to how she was doing – especially since it had been a headline in the Daily Prophet - but Andromeda didn’t press the question. Her sister continued. “Could you… would you come back?”

Andromeda pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth before shaking her head. “No.”

Bellatrix’ jaw clenched and unclenched while she bowed her head. “It’s going to get worse.”

“I figured. I don’t want you involved in it, Bella.”

“I already am. There’s no going back now.”

“The things I see in St. Mungo’s – “

“There’s going to be so much more.” Bellatrix’ words were abrupt and unbothered.

Andromeda took that to mean that her sister was okay with – if not proud of – all the patients in St. Mungo’s directly or indirectly because of her. The notion should have repulsed her, but instead she threw her arms around her sister and pulled her close again. “I love you.” She could feel Bellatrix swallow harshly. “That’s not going to change.”

“I love you too.” The dark-haired witch separated from her and went down the stairs and out into the street without another word.

Andromeda returned upstairs for another handful of drinks.

**

The next time Kingsley and the Potters were over discussing the increasing number of attacks on nearby muggle villages, Andromeda got up to put her daughter to bed, then cleaned the kitchen, and then fixed the light over the sink that had been out for months before returning to interrupt them at the dining room table.

“It’s Bellatrix and Rod. With Riddle.” Her tone and affect were flat.

Her friends looked at each other reluctantly before Kingsley spoke. “How did you find that out? It’s confidential.”

She realized her mistake and scrambled to cover herself. “I know what my sister’s magic looks like. It’s all over the patients who come into St. Mungo’s.” This actually was true. For months, she had been pretending not to recognize that electric blue crackling in so many vile injuries.

Thankfully, they accepted this explanation as to her sudden awareness of the situation, though she could tell that Ted knew better. Kingsley continued. “Malfoy too. And Antonin. The Carrows. Even Snape.”

Andromeda saw Lily wince and felt a surprisingly forceful compassion for her, but the thought was fleeting. “You kept it from me," she said icily.

The man opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, exhaled heavily, and opened it again. “We thought maybe it would blow over soon enough that we could wait til afterwards to tell you.” Kingsley clearly was picking his words to minimize impact, which greatly annoyed the auburn-haired witch.

“It’s not going to blow over.”

Kingsley sighed. “We know that now.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Her feigned impassivity was relatively convincing for the time being.

“We’re forming a special order to address it – off Ministry record. Dumbledore is running it.”

The middle Black sister snorted. “Of course. You’re all doomed.” The group nervously avoided looking at her or at each other. “You can’t take this on.”

“We have to.” James piped up. “We can’t just let it happen.”

Her voice snarled finally. “You think going to war against the Dark Lord will stop it? He’s not the issue.”

“The Dark Lord? You’re calling him that now too?”

“Yes, the Dark Lord. Did you forget who my family is?”

James shook his head incredulously at her. “He _absolutely_ is the problem.”

“No, the problem is that they need an excuse to do something with the old magic, and he’s giving it to them.” She surprised herself with her confidence in her assessment. “Bellatrix loves destruction. That’s all it is. And there’s never been a way for her to truly be herself that way – until now.”

“There never will be.” James interjected damning words. “If that’s who she is, she can’t be allowed to be herself. None of them can.”

“James, do you really know what it’s like to be an undiluted pureblood or do you just pretend?”

Their drinks clattered and tipped over, their contents puddling on the table. A purple steam began to rise from the puddle, but the others weren’t looking at it. They were looking at her the middle Black sister’s face grow dark with some combination of rage, contempt, and sorrow that they weren’t sure they had seen before. The cups continued to clatter in the liquid and spit steam.

“Andromeda.” Ted tried to reel her in, his calm, unhampered demeanor filling every space that her boiling magic was not yet.

“You don’t. You don’t know what it’s like to have magic clawing its way out of your chest, ripping through your eardrums and nasal passages like blood, swarming through your waking dreams.”

“Andromeda.” Now it was only Ted who wasn’t scooting back from the magic gathering into a cloud above the table.

“You don’t know what it’s like to drown in it until something – anything – lets it out. You don’t know what it’s like to have to let it out to keep it from killing you. They do! I do!”

James was too foolish to stop. “If that’s even true, it’s still no excuse. You’re at least doing the right thing. They aren’t. Evil is evil, and it has to be destroyed.”

She snapped. “Get out of my house!” The magic swirled and rushed at them, filling their mouths and nostrils so that they began to choke. “All of you! Get out!”

“You should leave, James.” Ted’s steady voice swept through his wife's thick magic. “Kings. Lily. You should all go.”

They stumbled from their chairs and out the front door. Ted gathered his wife into his arms and held her tightly, shielding both of their heads until the magic dissipated.


	12. Caught between Desperations

The first auror killed by the Death Eaters – as the Dark Lord’s followers now called themselves – died under Andromeda’s hands just after she turned 22. Abbott and Moody carried him through the halls of St. Mungo’s Emergency shouting until they found her. His swollen abdomen gave off an acidic stench, and a grey-green color crept from it up his torso. When it reached his face, the veins in his neck exploded, drenching her in a substance that was not blood. She was hustled to an enchanted detoxing room and was quarantined for a week afterwards. By the time she returned to work, another auror was dead; his partner had found him under a smoky skull and serpent floating above him. Within a few months, Bellatrix, Rod, and the Carrows went public with their allegiance to the Dark Lord and made their malicious intentions almost (but not quite) clear enough for arrest warrants to be made. This brough on Andromeda’s new low. The middle Black sister spent almost two weeks going straight to the pub after work and immediately back to work from the pub for an early morning shift, drunk as hell. She managed her performance and her appearance well enough to get by, and the only healer bold enough to confront her was put on unpaid leave for a month from which he returned without any boldness whatsoever.

St. Mungo’s exceeded capacity. Beds filled with aurors, muggles, and average witches and wizards lined the hallways. Andromeda was put in charge of the entire Emergency facility and hated how adept she became at ignoring the cries and pleas of hurting people in order to prioritize managing her team efficiently. One day in the breakroom, she found a copy of the Daily Prophet featuring a photo of Rod and Bellatrix leaning against a wall in Knockturn Alley and sneering at the camera, a skull and serpent tattoo peeking out from under one of Bellatrix’ rolled up sleeves. That night, Ted sent Nymphadora to his sister’s for the week and taught himself how to rapidly repair the ceiling and protect the house from massive flooding while his wife wallowed in unkempt magic and a haze of liquor upstairs on sick leave. 

Once her volatility had passed and her magic quit threatening their home, he broached one of several conversations he didn’t want to have while they scraped eggs around on their plates at the new dining room table. “Andy, it can’t go on like this, you know.”

She scraped her fork harder against the plate. “I know. There’s just no one who can keep up at St. Mungo’s.”

“That’s not what I meant – although solving that problem would probably help.”

She swallowed thickly. “What are you trying to say, Ted?”

He set his fork down and took a deep breath. “I found the gin in the back of your potions cabinet.”

She stared intently at her plate. “What of it?”

“And the cupboard behind my mom’s vases. And the bathroom – well, Dora found that one. And in the pocket of your Mungo’s robe.” 

“Why were you snooping through my robes?” The question was meant to sound offended, but it just fell flat.

“Because there was liquor hidden in your potions cabinet, the bathroom, and in my mom’s vases.” The witch set her jaw and looked at the ceiling, but she didn’t say anything, so he continued. “I know your magic is hard to deal with. I know you’re in a harder situation than anyone else right now.” The tear that trailed down her cheek made him have to blink back his own in order to say what needed to be said. “But it’s not helping. I think it might be making it worse. And maybe it’s time to get you some help.”

Andromeda knew her husband was right, and that he would have been right if he’d said the same thing to her years earlier. The next day she dumped all the liquor bottles – well, almost all of them - in a dumpster in Knockturn Alley on her way to work. She caught a glimpse of Rabastan emerging from a storefront not far away, and quickly disapparated.

**

Andromeda’s anxiety presented as impatience. “I’m offering you a job.”

Narcissa, as stoic as her middle sister was flustered, measured herself and her words carefully. She had agreed to meet Andromeda at a muggle café on the south side of London at her patronus’ urgent request, but whatever conversation she expected – this was not it. “At St. Mungo’s? Are you out of your mind?”

“I need help, Cissy. There are simply too many people coming into Emergency that the other healers aren’t skilled enough to treat. And there’s too much going on to truly have them learn on the job.”

“Lucius is one of them, you know. He has the dark mark too.”

“I can keep it under wraps. No one – _no one_ – has to know that you’re working. I promise.”

The blonde witch let out an exasperated huff. “It’s not as simple as hiding. I don’t think you understand what’s happening.”

“I bet I do. An ongoing mixture of imperius curses and inciting tribalism.”

“That and more.” Narcissa’s blue eyes lost briefly lost their iciness. “The Dark Lord reads my husband’s mind every day. He’s already forced Lucius to pledge our first child to him. He’s usurping Bella’s magic; she gets less powerful every day it seems like. I’m the one who has to take care of Rod and Rab and everyone else when they return from missions. There is absolutely no way I can help you in St. Mungo’s and still protect my family.”

“They’re my family too!” Her little sister’s tirade made the auburn-haired witch protest and momentarily forget her objective for the meeting.

“Not in the same way. It’s not the same anymore.”

“You can’t bloody deny it. It’s not like I’m not part of the family just because you ignore me in public and locked me out of the fucking Gringotts vault!”

“You’re not on the tapestry anymore.” Narcissa’s coldness returned to cut her sister off. 

“What?”

“Bella burned you off the day you left.” 

The kind of painful disbelief that already knows the dreaded truth rolled over the middle Black sister. “But- but that doesn’t…. How can.. It isn’t…”

“It kept Father from chasing you down to kill you.”

“But how could she…”

“How could she? Andromeda, Bella has done and still is doing more for you than you have ever done for her. At least be grateful enough to try not to fuck it up more.” With that, Narcissa swiftly left the booth and the restaurant without fanfare and without waiting for a response from her distraught sister.

When the waitress came back, Andromeda waved her away and instead approached the bar, where she ordered something she later didn’t remember. Whatever it was, though, it drowned her in memories of how her magic had burned in her head and heart when Riddle had told her how great he could make her, and all she could think about was Bellatrix and Rod burning, billowing, bellowing with manic magic. _How long could they go on believing they were getting brighter until they fizzled out completely?_

**

St. Mungo’s beds stayed filled. Andromeda received approval to extend the Emergency facility with temporary shelters along the north and east sides of the building in order to support patients who fell somewhere between the emergency and long term care categories so that the most urgent patients could be kept closest to the healers’ offices. She accepted a large pool of healing interns, staffed the new sections with them, and acted as their direct supervisor until she was able to bring back Amelia Bones’ oldest brother, an excellent healer who had been removed from his St. Mungo’s post and lost his healing license years ago because of some legal trouble. Unfortunately, his arrival coincided with another uptick in patient admittances, and her workload didn’t decrease. Her sleeping hours shrank and working hours multiplied – working hours full of patients littered with her older sister’s magic. The unlabeled alcohol showed back up in the bathroom and under the bed. Nothing abated. No sufficient help came, and Ted was still absolutely correct that things could not keep going on like this.

**

Hagrid was enjoying his evening with a pint of the new ale that he’d brewed with leftovers from his Autumn pumpkin patch when a loud knock sounded at the front door.

“Hang on a sec’” he hollered while he set down his utensils and the sludgy substance he was using to try to repair a molted set of baby dragon wings. He wiped his hands on his shirt and thumped his way to the front of the room. It was too dark to see the figure standing on his porch through the foggy window, but the slim figure with flowing hair looked like a woman to him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand self-consciously, unlatched the door, and opened it to the blackened tip of a wand that immediately pressed into the soft part of his neck. Angry brown eyes glared at him from behind the wand. 

“Don’t move a fucking muscle.” The woman pressed the wand harder, and he wondered if the tip was sharp enough to break his skin. “You’re not going to do anything unless I tell you to. Do you understand me?” He nodded. “Take me to the castle.”

“Why- why not jus’ owl Dumbledore? I’m sure he’ll let you in if he knows yer coming.” Hagrid whimpered. If he remembered correctly, this was Andromeda Black, no, Tonks, but she was exuding a malevolence he remembered as more characteristic of her older sister.

“Because I don’t want to owl him, you stupid oaf. Get moving.”

His hands shook as he fumbled with his coat and they set off toward the castle. He tried to come up with ways to disarm the woman, alert Dumbledore, or even just call for help, but her wand was poking painfully up under his shoulder blade with every step. He recalled from several unfortunate encounters that Bellatrix Lestrange was a terror, but even though Andromeda had always kept a lower profile than her older sister he had heard some frightening things about her as well. Since he didn’t know what was true and what was rumor, he decided to comply and let Dumbledore handle her. Upon reaching the headmaster’s corridor and watching helplessly as one gargoyle came alive to sprint away out of sight while the woman shattered the other still guarding Dumbledore’s office, he both regretted his decision and congratulated himself on not provoking her ire towards himself. Explosions reverberated through the hallway, awakening several stone soldiers who then arrayed themselves at attention, saluted the woman, and began to beat away at the entrance to the headmaster’s office.

Fortunately, the woman ceased her spellwork and the soldiers fell rigid when Dumbledore himself appeared in the hole they had made. He surveyed the damage done to his door with interest before settling his gaze on the auburn-haired witch and giving her a welcoming gesture. 

“Hello, Andromeda. This is a surprise, though not unwelcome.” His eyes twinkled as they swept the corridor. “Do come in. Hagrid, you may as well join us.”

Hagrid tried to come up with a good excuse not to be in the same room as the almost certainly dark witch, but Dumbledore didn’t let him. Instead, he found himself scrunching his body into a tiny chair next to Minerva McGonagall behind a row of talented witches and wizards who were half-standing with wands were at the ready and mouths all agape.

Andromeda’s disgust was unbearably lovely in a way it should not have been, and it cowed the courage of the young members of the Order of the Phoenix. Hagrid counted them off: Shacklebolt, the Longbottoms, James and Lily, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Alastair Moody, the Prewett boys, and a couple he didn’t recognize.

“I’m surprised you’re not all dead yet if this is the safest place you have to meet. I walked straight in.” Hagrid supposed the woman’s statement was more or less true.

“Well, thank you for demonstrating that to us. We’ll have to address our security.” Never mind that the headmaster’s corridor was all but destroyed. Dumbledore’s most generous voice continued to welcome the woman in – as if he were still an educator, trying to convince his pupil to put enough effort into a lesson to be successful without her knowing he was trying. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” 

The woman rolled her wand in her fingers. “My sister.” The Order members murmured at each other with wary looks. “She’s decimating you, is she not?”

“We’re holding the Death Eaters quite well.” Sirius spoke up.

Andromeda turned to glare daggers at him. “Are you, Siri? Is that why I’ve had to set up a temporary emergency shelter outside of St. Mungo’s to care for injured aurors and muggles because we don’t have any more beds available? Is that why every one of my staff works a double at least twice a week, and I have to leave interns fresh out of Hogwarts alone with multiple patients? No, you’re fucking losing.”

The outburst did not surprise Hagrid, but it took a few stunned breaths for the Order members to react. 

“You’re right, it’s a rough time, but we’re going to be ok.” The voice came from one of the Prewetts. “This is a team of the best aurors and best minds in the wizarding world right now.”

“Intelligence means nothing,” the fuming woman hissed. “Everything about you is useless. Ministry training, dueling records, education, Light magic, your self-righteous principles – all nothing. All shit.”

“No offense, Andromeda,” Remus’ words made Hagrid - and McGonagall, it seemed - suck in his breath and press his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The woman was most _definitely_ going to take offense. “No offense – you know a lot about dark magic, but we’ve all been fighting _against_ it for a lot longer than you have.”

The woman didn’t miss a beat. “It doesn’t really seem to me that the opinion of a rabid dog is relevant in this situation.” She blinked at him, and he turned red.

Shocked by the slur, the group rushed to defend their friend:

“Andromeda!”

“WHOA, whoa, whoa!”

“What the hell – “

“You can’t say that!”

“That’s unacceptable!”

“Shut up, Tonks!”

Moody’s indignant voice overrode them all. “You can just get out of here if you’re going to say things like that.” 

“Alastair, your fuckface is going to be the next one in St. Mungo’s if you don’t get your shit together.” The witch clearly didn't care about the objections being thrown her way.

Next to Hagrid, McGonagall rubbed her forehead while she shook her head. He tried to shrink further into his chair.

“It’s going to be okay,” Alice piped up. She was perched on the edge of her seat, expecting to be able to reason with the auburn-haired witch whom she had sheltered in her home for two years. “It’s not okay, right now. That’s clear. We’re not denying that. But Good will ultimately triumph, Light overcomes dark magic, love wins over hate. It’s bad. It might get worse for a while, but it’s going to get better.” 

“No no no, no no – “ Andromeda shook her finger at her friend. “It’s going to get worse, and worse, and it’s not going to get better if you lot keep doing what you’re doing. You have no shitting clue what you’re doing. You’ve never faced this kind of magic before. No, no, I’m not talking about the Dark Lord,” she raised her hand to stop the other Prewett from interrupting. “It’s the old pureblood magic – the magic that people like you,” she swept her hand at Dumbledore, and there was a small, barely visible ripple of magic in front of him, “taught them to repress, taught them that they had to shove down because there was no place for it in their daily lives, no place for it in society. So it’s boiled and festered and clawed for a way to get out, and the Dark Lord has given them a reason – a justification - to use it. He’s manipulating the shit out of them, and it’s fucking you in the ass!”

They all sat stunned for a moment while watching the woman seethe. McGonagall could see Andromeda’s own magic mist thickly around her - purple, then red, then silver, then gold, then purple again. There were no doxies; she supposed the woman was too certain of herself, too certain of the situation, to be bothered with them. Her old heart for the tormented auburn-haired witch surged through her frustration with her for being such a problem. “Then what exactly do you suggest we do, Andromeda?” 

The woman chewed on her lip, clearly on the edge of something she abhorred. “I’m going to teach you how to fight like them.” 

The group tittered with surprise. Hagrid couldn’t believe the grin that spread over Dumbledore’s face as he clapped his hands together and said, “Excellent. When shall we begin?”

“Now.”

The half-giant unconsciously rubbed the spot where the woman’s wand had pressed so hard under his jaw. His hand came away with blood on it.

**

So Andromeda trained the Order of the Phoenix. It helped for a while. St. Mungo’s cleared up; the Department of Law Enforcement stabilized. Their friends were less worse for wear when they came over for dinner. By and large, the Daily Prophet stopped publishing fear-mongering jeremiads about deaths, dark marks, and torture. “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” lurked at the edges of barstool gossip, but that could be overlooked when explicit violence didn’t loom around every corner. Andromeda didn’t want to know what the Order was doing as long as they weren’t dying; she didn’t want to hear about the Death Eaters and what they were becoming. Mostly, everyone respected her enough not to discuss these things around her, and when Moody toed the line (which he did often), Ted shut him up before she had to. Ted was wonderful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Androtrix shines its brightest in the next two chapters.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	13. Always Only Doxies

There was a moment where it seemed like Rod was trying to defect. More likely he was dazed in an attack and briefly lost his wits. Or maybe he had nowhere to go after things didn’t go as planned. Whatever the reason, when the intern with long, pink hair came running down the hallway yelling “Mrs. Tonks! Mrs. Tonks!”, it was one of her oldest, dearest friends Andromeda found staggering through the waiting room and creating quite a stir. His lips were covered in blood - some dry, some still fresh - and he was holding his hand over a wound from which a putrid, orange liquid bubbled and rolled down over his red, throbbing dark mark tattoo. The others in the waiting room retreated wide-eyed to its edges while a handful of employees cowered behind the front desk. The intern who had run to find her stood gasping for breath by her side.

“Andy.” Rod coughed up something equally as orange and swayed dizzily.

Andromeda lurched forward to catch him. She swiveled her head to the young witch next to her. “Help me get him to the closest room.” The young witch obliged, and they managed him into the back and onto a fresh, private bed. Andromeda thanked her and shooed her away so that she was alone with him.

“What happened?” She began examining his wounds in a purely matter-of-fact manner and made a mental list of what she needed the intern to gather for her.

“I messed up. Got in the way of the Carrows.”

She didn’t ask him why he’d come to St. Mungo’s, didn’t ask him why he hadn’t gone to Narcissa, didn’t ask him what he and the Carrows had been doing, didn’t want to make him say the things that put him at risk or made her need to disapprove of him. His eyes were hollow and shadowed with rings of sleeplessness; he was much thinner than he had been the last time she’d seen him, although she supposed that was years ago now.

“This is pretty nasty.”

“Please tell me you can fix it here.”

“Maybe if we had more time, but I can’t hold the Ministry out of St. Mungo’s long enough for it. I think Cissy could.” She rubbed her thumb over the erupting orange wound, and Rod was relieved that she didn’t blink twice at the dark mark.

“Cissy’s at the Malfoy Manor. If I go there like this, the Dark Lord is sure to torture me for getting fucked up.” His voice betrayed trepidation.

Andromeda pursed her lips in thought while she wiped his mouth with a wet cloth and gently pulled his top lip back to reveal a glowing laceration. “The wards always used to be down at our old hunting lodge. Do you know if they’re back up?”

“I don’t know.” His words were garbled through her gloved fingers still holding his lip so she could peer under it. “But I don’t think I can apparate.”

“Maybe the floo then. I can send a patronus to Cissy. I think she would meet you there.”

“But if he sees it…”

“I can make sure he doesn’t.”

Rod shrugged. He wasn’t sure how that was possible, but he trusted his wife’s sisters more than he did almost anyone else. He watched the auburn-haired woman breathe out her kelpie patronus and instruct it with her _dark, earnest goodness_. He couldn’t hear her, however, because whatever she was saying was suddenly drowned out by a familiar roar over a hubbub of voices.

Andromeda apparently heard it too, because she was up and moving before the patronus had fully departed. “It’s Moody.” She seized him by the wrist and dragged him to the door, pausing only to stuff an indiscriminate handful of potions from the shelf into his shirt. She shoved him out into the hallway and to their left just in time to see the young auror with an already formidable reputation tear around the corner with his robes flapping and spattering himself with his own impassioned spittle. “Go, go, go! There’s a floo at the end of the next hall.”

“Lestrange!” Moody whipped his wand around. “Andromeda, get out of the way!”

Rod stumbled, and the middle Black sister grabbed him by the back of his collar to keep him upright. A wave of magic was thrown up behind her, momentarily knocking the rambunctious auror to the ground. She pushed her friend forward, not stopping to watch the man crawl up from the floor to keep chasing them. Rod wasn’t moving fast enough, and Moody’s spells ricocheted recklessly around Andromeda’s unconscious shield surrounding them. She slashed her wand backwards to send something random - but insidious - at the man whose side she was supposed to be on.

“Move! He’s under arrest!” The auror’s grunting sounds were closer. One of his spells sailed over the top of them, bounced off the wall, and sunk deep into Rod’s shoulder. Moody let out a triumphant yowl and, emboldened, let loose a new barrage of spells at them.

“Back off, Alastair!” She didn’t recognize her own shrill voice, but it surely was hers. “Get back!”

Purple and yellow, _and blue this time_ , swam in front of her eyes before it dove back at the wretched man. When they turned the corner, the fireplace ahead roared with a click of her tongue (if Moody had registered this, it would have helped him solve the murders of Antonin Dolohov and Rabastan Lestrange after the Second Wizarding War - but he missed it entirely). She swiped the floo powder off the mantle, tossed more than necessary into the fireplace, whispered for the Black hunting lodge, and shoved Rod headfirst into the green flames. She raised her wand to head height and spun around to face the clawing auror just as he reached her; her wand plunged into the corner of his eye next to his nose. A thoughtless twist and jerk of her wrist drew a bellow of pain from the man’s lungs followed by a sickening squelch as his eyeball popped free from the socket. He dropped his wand to fling his hands up at the agony, and he lost his balance and began to collapse. The ocular nerve snagged on Andromeda’s wand, and it stretched dramatically mid-air – much longer than one would expect - until it snapped. The globe bounced three times on the tile floor towards the woman. She stepped forward slowly, savoring the satisfying pucker and pop as Moody’s severed eyeball burst under her shoe.

**

The night after the Moody incident, Andromeda and Ted lay shoulder-to-shoulder in bed while she tried to sort through her anger, self-righteousness, guilt, and the occasional flash of glee. She’d had to stay over night at St. Mungo’s to deal with the resulting drama that occurred as more and more people involved themselves in the situation. She didn’t get the chance to process her feelings about it until she was finally home the next morning. Even then, the ordeal followed her to their house. The Head Auror – a man from the Abbott family – demanded she come outside and face him. The confrontation quickly devolved into a shouting match which it seemed that Andromeda won – whether because of her unassailable commitment to medical ethics, her forceful charisma (“gods damn your motherfucking laws! he was unarmed and incapacitated due to a life-threatening injury!”), or the wards that began to visibly quiver as she became angrier, Ted was not sure. Things were going to be fine for most of the parties involved: his wife was to return to work the next day with no known repercussions, the intern with the pink hair had been hired on full-time before she left the office that morning, Moody was being fashioned an enchanted eyeball in Switzerland as a boon from the Auror department so they could sweep everything under the rug; nothing was heard from or about Rod for the time being. Only the St. Mungo’s office manager who had called law enforcement was clearly worse off; she cleared out her workspace, was relieved of her employee access, placed on a visitor alarm list, and escorted from the building by security all before Moody had been rescued from the floor in front of the floo.

Ted let his wife brood until she wanted to speak. He had been gifted with patience long before he’d met her, but it was certainly now something with which he had a maddening amount of practice. He knew if he waited long enough, she would tell him some truth she needed someone to know but couldn’t bring herself to share with anyone else.

The woman chewed on her lip before speaking finally. “I’m not a good witch, Ted. I don’t think I ever was.”

He turned his head and squinted at her in the twilight. “Do you really still believe in dark and light magic?”

“That’s the point. I think Karkaroff was right about one thing back then - no magic is inherently dark, the witch or wizard makes it dark.” Ted did not reply, but he took her hand in his as she continued with a new anxious resignation in her voice. “You know what I’m most afraid of?" Another pause where Ted waited. "What if Dora’s more like me than like you?”

“Then she will be the most incredible witch that anyone who doesn’t know you has ever met.”

She smiled – _gods above_ – the smile he always congratulated himself for getting from her and rolled over to curl up against him. “You’re ridiculous.”

“That's why you married me.” He wrapped his arm around her.

“No, I married you because you’re good in bed. And you’re decent to look at.”

“All right, I’ll take it.” He grinned and turned out the light as she began to kiss his neck.

**

Andromeda really did make quite the effort to curb her drinking habit for a while – but that time later clouded in her memory as much as her soggy, liquored phases did. She took to riding the Knight Bus a few times a week until the wee hours of the morning instead. It was comforting somehow - the way all the lamp posts, sidewalks, cars, and people blurred into a single stream, the shrunken heads yammering at passengers at each stop, the rickety rattling that apparently didn’t mean the bus was about to fall apart. Mostly no one recognized her, either. Purebloods didn’t deign to ride the bus, and it wasn’t exactly the most reputable witches and wizards with bright Ministry careers who filled its seats late in the evening. No one asked anything of her, and no one gave her any trouble. Nothing happened to make any moment different than the next, especially if she ignored other passengers.

One Thursday, the bus slammed to its typical shuddering halt in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The bus had been empty for hours, so the driver had simply been speeding about on various whims while chainsmoking shit Turkish Reds. Andromeda, out of habit, paid no attention to the figure that entered until it took the seat directly next to her and those famous, black curls fell next to her shoulder. _Unbelievable._ Her breath hitched, but she didn’t move. It felt strange to be so close to someone so important while so alone.

“How are you?” The auburn-haired witch finally whispered.

“Better if you look at me.”

Andromeda did as her older sister asked. Silence again returned as they appraised each other. That is, Bellatrix appraised Andromeda; Andromeda flailed about in the depths of her sister’s charcoal eyes. Their bodies swayed with the bus when it hit a pothole and slammed into the back of the seat when the driver took yet another turn too fast, but they didn’t break eye contact.

Bellatrix reached up and cupped Andromeda’s cheek. “Baby girl, you look like you’re seeing a ghost.”

“Am I?”

The dark witch chuckled and took her sister’s hand. “Do I feel like a ghost?”

“No. No you don’t. You never do.” Andromeda saw the other woman’s eyebrow arch, but she didn’t care. The bus didn’t take away her inhibitions, but it made her feel less bothered by them. It was easier here.

“Thank you for what you did for Rod.”

Andromeda didn’t – maybe couldn’t – respond. Bellatrix chuckled again and leaned back. She draped her arm over the back of her sister’s seat and waited for her to give in. It didn’t take long. Andromeda sighed and sank into her, closing her eyes and letting her head rest on Bellatrix’ shoulder. The older witch watched the auburn-haired woman fighting with herself as always, this time about her own hand balled up in a fist on her own leg. Andromeda gave in again, and placed it, fingers lightly curled on Bellatrix’ knee. They didn’t speak. They didn’t move. They didn’t look at anyone who got onto the bus. They sat for an unknown amount of time, drinking in each other’s intimacy.

Andromeda started. Momentarily disoriented, she swung her head around to make sense of her surroundings. She was the only one on the bus. No one was sitting next to her; there was no sign of Bellatrix. She rubbed her eyes and tried to pretend one of the shrunken heads wasn’t ogling her. She must’ve fallen asleep, must’ve conjured her sister in her dream. Her sleep and dreams were all the same, whether here or at the house. _How wearisome._

A twitch of her fingers brushed her thumb against something hard in her hand. She turned her palm up and opened her hand to reveal a small, carven thing. It was a doxy, beautiful despite its wooden roughness, with the creature’s standard malevolent spark in its eyes.

_Just doxies, baby girl. They’re always only doxies._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Weekend!
> 
> Next chapter is for the shippers. 
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	14. Colly Strings (or The Decision)

Andromeda kept the figurine hidden from Ted, even though there was no good reason to. At this point, she figured Ted had seen enough of this part of her that he could’ve and would’ve left a long time ago if he wanted to. The doxy sat in the pocket of her coat, where she slipped her hand to roll it around in her fingers absentmindedly at rare moments of solitude and in too many moments where she should have been focused on other things. It told her more than she could believe. It said that she hadn’t made up Bellatrix on the Knight Bus – not entirely, anyway. It said that Bellatrix had been gentle to her, that Bellatrix had come looking for her, that Bellatrix had been thinking of her, that her family was not entirely done with her. It said that she had let her guard down and that Bellatrix had not taken advantage of it. It said her old life was not gone, not irretrievable, not fabricated (as it sometime seemed these days). It said so many intimidating, sweet things.

One night, she was in the kitchen spinning the doxy like a top on the stove, deep in thoughts she wasn’t aware of – so deep that she missed the first knock and the second, the third finally wresting her attention. Neither Ted nor Dora were at home, so she approached the front door cautiously, mentally running through all plausible visitors. She had made more than a few enemies after the Moody incident at St. Mungo’s, and she was on high alert for potential retribution these days. She deployed her wand, though she kept it pointed at the ground, and cracked the door just enough to recognize the outline of a very dark witch in the very dark night. 

She let the door swing open. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“But may I come in?” Bellatrix asked in a low voice – intentional but without pretense.

Andromeda paused before saying, “Of course,” and moving herself out of the way so that the other woman could enter.

She escorted her sister through the house, watching Bellatrix inspect the furniture, pictures on the walls, and each room they passed with interest. Her black curls were swept up onto the top of her head in a messy bun with her wand stuck through it to hold it all together, just like it always had been when they were younger. Bellatrix' corsets had been gone for several years, and Andromeda hardly remembered them with the mugglish trousers and collared shirt in their place, still all black. Hadn’t she herself been punished viciously by their mother for wearing something similar during her fourth (or was it fifth?) year at Hogwarts? Perhaps she should ask her sister if that had actually happened.

At the kitchen, the dark witch – she was undoubtedly _the_ dark witch now, the Good Side's new favorite symbol of Evil – slid ahead of Andromeda to take up most of the kitchen space. “Kind of small, isn’t it? Even by muggle standards.” She ran her fingers along the edge of an unadorned cabinet.

Andromeda couldn’t argue with her. It was indeed small. There was just enough room in the kitchen for them to stand side by side between the u-shaped counters without touching. This normally seemed like more than enough room, but now it felt so full, so thick, with her sister turning slowly in a circle and surveying Andromeda’s new life. 

“Want some water?” she asked, and that felt silly.

“Do you have anything stronger?”

She shook her head while she filled a squat cup with water. “I’m trying to stop.”

The dark-haired woman narrowed her eyes but also nodded tacit approval. “Water is fine then.”

Andromeda marveled at her own hand not quivering when she handed her sister the cup. Bellatrix took it and settled her lower back against the edge of the counter behind her. She alternated a poignant gaze between the cup in her hands and her middle sister’s uncharacteristically undisturbed eyes while she sipped the drink. Andromeda mirrored her on the opposite counter, and their lower legs rested lightly against each other. _Merlin, the kitchen was small._

“Where’s Ted?”

“Working late at the shop. He’s trying to rush a massive custom order for a new client. Several days into this.”

“His brooms are pretty popular I hear.”

“Not like you to read the Witch’s Weekly.”

Bellatrix laughed, and it was genuine, which gratified Andromeda immensely. The dark witch took another sip. “And your daughter?”

“I think she will be pretty popular too.” This earned Andromeda another candid reaction – an eye roll perfected with the faintest amusement.

“Where is she?”

“At Ted’s sister’s house for the weekend.” 

When Bellatrix set down her glass, so did Andromeda. When she rested her hands on the edge of the counter at her sides, so did Andromeda.

“Nymphadora, right? How very pureblooded of you.” Bellatrix teased. “How do you explain that to Ted’s family?”

“They love it, actually.” Andromeda felt warmth rush her when her sister said her daughter’s name. The heat remained. It was _so warm_ in the kitchen.

The dark witch snorted. “Lucky for you. What’s she like?”

Andromeda was momentarily touched by Bellatrix’ interest in her niece. “She’s… strong-willed. She laughs really loud. She steals and hides Ted’s wand on a regular basis. She reminds me a lot of you actually.”

“Good. If she were like you, I’d strangle her within an hour of meeting her.”

The auburn-haired woman scowled. “Do you ever stop being cruel?”

“About as often as you relax your iron will.” Bellatrix’ voice fell softly open-ended, leaving a peaceful suspense teetering on the brink of some unknown thing that could be wonderful.

The silence pulsed between the two women, identical in so many ways, their similarities intensified by their mirrored posturing. It felt like an eternity that they watched each other, an eternity that Bellatrix clearly wasn’t planning on ending. Eventually, the auburn-haired witch carefully pushed herself forward from the counter, placed her hands on her sister’s forearms, and pressed her lips against hers. Bellatrix didn’t move forward or away, but her lips parted slightly to receive her the first time and the next until Andromeda pulled back to search her sister’s face.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Bellatrix’ voice was something like husky.

When Andromeda leaned in again, her sister straightened up to allow her to press closer so she kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. Without thinking much about it, the auburn-haired witch dragged her lips down her sister’s jaw, below it, and flicked her tongue lightly against her neck between kisses. 

Bellatrix chuckled lowly after sucking in her breath. She let her head rock back and forth with Andromeda’s kisses, brushed her lips against her sister’s ear, and began to whisper something from way back in their childhood. “ _There once was a girl, who had a little curl, right in the –_ “ A motivating gasp interrupted her singsong. “ _\- middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very, very good, but she when was –_ “

“Do you know you’re least attractive when you’re mean?” Andromeda raised her head to speak with an almost threatening impatience. This wasn’t exactly true, but it felt good to say. When the dark witch grasped her shirt with both fists to pull her back in, she apparated them upstairs to the bedroom, and they continued unabated.

Sex with her sister was everything barbaric Andromeda had fantasized about and everything tender she had not dared imagine. They moved as if they had practiced together even as every next move was a delicious surprise. Their give and take both excited and settled her, and in a moment she believed she would remember forever, kneeling with her head thrown back and Bellatrix’ mouth at her chest, she absurdly reveled in the memory of the sound Moody’s eyeball had made when it burst under her foot.

**

Bellatrix saw it first - the small stain of dull red that appeared in the closest corner of the ceiling. It crept larger and began to shimmer as she stared for a few minutes, feeling her sister’s warm skin pressed up against her back and relishing the soft hair splashed across her shoulder. _Damn it, Andy._ That spot was going to ruin so much. She hadn’t exactly planned on this happening this way, so she wasn’t ready with an exit strategy - something that gave her no small anxiety. A small trickle broke free from the silvery-red spot to escape down the wall; she sighed.

The other woman apparently had not yet noticed it, because she snaked her arm around Bellatrix’ waist and let her lips brush against the back of her neck while she spoke. “What’s up?”

The dark witch shut her eyes to steel herself against the pain that was about to unfold. She slid herself out from under the edge of the duvet despite her sister’s lingering, protesting arm. Her clothes were piled on the floor next to a mirror, and she slowly started to arrange them for wear.

“Bella?” Looking in the mirror, she could see Andromeda sit up to look at her. That woman, _that_ woman. Those auburn eyes flicked unconsciously up to the silvery-red spot spreading on the wallpaper, and in them the first seeds of panic sprouted. 

_Fucking damn it._ “I have to go.” The dark witch focused on flattening her pockets and straightening her belt so that she didn’t have to watch her sister swallowing harshly and shrinking against the headboard away from the magic now rolling in great globs to the floor.

Unfortunately for all of them, a loud sigh drew their attention to the open bedroom door. Ted stood with tired shoulders slumped, wand in hand, the other rubbing the back of his neck. His weary eyes darted between his wife, her infamous sister, and that very specific, dreaded, damned magic. 

“Ted!” Andromeda’s panic took over. Her gasps began to come shrill, fast, and loud. 

_Her eyes, her magic, gods damn it, gods damn her._

"Ted, I” She was hoping to say something, but nothing made sense to say. “I didn’t mean – I’m so – this is not – not what it looks – I’m sorry - “ The room began to shake. The mirror clattered against the wall, and the lamp from the bedside table shattered on the ground in a pile of paint chips stripping from the ceiling. The woman’s eyes were wild as she scrambled from the bed on the far side from her sister, clutching the duvet to hide her nakedness as she retreated from both of them. “I’m sorry!”

Ted looked miserable. Bellatrix braced herself with a protego shield as he raised his wand, but he didn’t point it at her. “Stupefy.” His wife slumped unconscious against the wall.

Bellatrix made The Decision while watching her middle sister go limp – the one she wouldn’t unmake until the last time they ever saw each other. She turned nonchalantly away, shrugged at the man in his own bedroom doorway, and made no effort to dress faster. 

“Don’t shrug,” the man spat wearily. “What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Her voice became lazy and taunting. “Are you jealous, Ted?”

“No.”

“No? Your wife just made love to her sister like she’d never been fucked before. I’d be in a jealous rage if I were you.” She started to button her shirt.

“No, Bellatrix, I’m not jealous of anything about your life – especially not the part where sleeping with your sister is the happiest experience you can come up with these days. I bet you’ll be begging Merlin, Morgana, and every muggle god you’ve ever heard of that this will help you cast a patronus again.”

Everything about the man’s words grated on her; she gritted her teeth to keep from revealing it and forced her fingers to slow down to regain control of the situation. “Knocking her out was a little heavy-handed, don’t you think?” She finished buttoning her shirt, cocked her head at herself in the mirror, and unbuttoned the top two buttons again.

“You’re so goddamn selfish.”

Bellatrix huffed and turned back to him. “You said you could handle her.” 

Ted’s approach across the room toward her was menacing, though not malicious. She found this a strange juxtaposition, and though she expected it to make him seem weak, it didn’t. “I do handle her. Every single day. But you don’t. You flit in and out of her life to play your fucking games, and you never take responsibility for what you do to her.”

“Her mistakes are not my responsibility.”

“You _always_ take the easy way out! You never suck it up and face her – or yourself. You’re not going to do anything. You're not going to repair the house after she brings half of it down with this magic.” He gestured at the silver-red streaks dissolving the paper and sheetrock. “You’re not going to spend every night for the next two weeks searching every wizarding and muggle pub in London, begging the Fates that you find her gambling away an ungodly sum of money in a rigged card game instead of passed out in a bus stop. You’re not going to have to sort through your mother’s vases, testing them to see which ones are actually transfigured liquor bottles hidden throughout the house – maybe even in your daughter’s room. You’re not going to have to wake up early to help heal the bruises she got from falling down the stairs so that the people at St. Mungo’s don’t think her husband beats her.” 

Something painful shot across the dark witch’s face and shattered her lackadaisical façade. Ted saw it and didn’t pause to give her any chance to process his words. “You think you’re so self-aware, but you’re too selfish to recognize how much you hurt her, how much you hurt my family, all the damn time.”

“Your family?!” Bellatrix latched onto something that would let her turn her mounting despair into anger. “I am the only fucking reason that woman” – she jabbed her finger at Andromeda crumpled below the window – “and you and your daughter are alive. I hold the Dark Lord in an unbreakable vow for it, and I serve him faithfully every day to keep it that way. Your family depends on me!”

“My family _is_ your family, Bellatrix! And you’ll be a wretched fool until you acknowledge that – no matter how much power you hold.”

Ted’s words hung heavy in the expanse between them. The dark witch was, for once, speechless, and she managed her turbulence by busying herself with her boots. When she stood up, her face was impassive again.

“Fine. Have it your way.” Her voice was quiet and too still. She flicked her wand at his wife, her sister. “Obliviate.” Then she rushed past him and out of the house without another word or glance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday to all, and to all a good night.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**


	15. Wicked Witch of the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I took a long break from this story because I didn't love the way I had initially written this chapter and spent some time on some other things. Here is my latest draft. The last chapter will be posted much more quickly. Cheers to December 2020._
> 
> _**never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just lucky to get to play in it.**_

Until her mid-20s, Andromeda had been under the impression, like her father, that she had trouble controlling her magic and therefore was severely limited in her ability to go after things she wanted. This was not the case. Rather, she didn’t exercise her magic and go after things she wanted until it became a bad idea to do so. At least, this is what she came to believe. She believed all sorts of erroneous things, many of them about herself, but just like everyone else, and especially like Bellatrix, she remained ignorant of that. Still, erroneous beliefs helped her make sense of the world, again just like everyone else, and because she had so much impact, they helped others make sense of the world as well. Eventually that would be a good thing, but initially it wasn’t.

**

Penelope Fawley sat in her favorite chair at the bar, the one that looked wildly out of place at the counter with its red velvet seat and high back. It was gaudy, she knew, but its extravagance usually helped her feel cheerier whenever her family or friends dragooned her into coming to this swanky lounge. It was high-class, no doubt, which is exactly why she despised it, though she wouldn’t admit it. Theoretically, a pureblood or even a wealthy or powerful muggleborn could get anything done here, and the Fawleys had frequented it regularly ever since she and Alice had been old enough to get in. Being the primary heir of one of the Sacred 28 had its perks, but the time she had to spend schmoozing slimy, brown-nosing witches and wizards was not one of them. Having to put up with one’s betrothed carousing with half a dozen other witches from lesser families was also not one of them. That’s what she was doing tonight. She hated it, and she was wondering if she was going to end up hating him.

She was busying herself examining her fingernails carefully in the faint glow of a light far above her when someone she had not seen in years slid into the chair next to her. She curled her fingers into her palms and set them in her lap as if hiding something valuable – because where else was she going to put them?

“Hello, Andromeda.”

“Penelope.” 

The woman’s lips caressed her name coolly, both similar and very dissimilar to the way they had so many years ago at school – that is, when Andromeda had bothered to address her at all. Once an infamous daughter of the Most Ancient and Noble house, she was hardly mentioned anymore – save Alice on occasion. How far the woman had fallen! Penelope tried to convince herself that she felt superior to the disgraced witch, that she now ironically had the upper hand. Unfortunately, the woman still made her feel small. That legendary auburn hair sprawled gracefully when she tossed it to the side with a flippant hand. Her vaguely bloodshot eyes should have made her look unattractive, but they didn’t. This peeved Penelope so she summoned her best pureblood scorn.

“I didn’t know you still frequented such establishments.”

“Only when I want to spend too much money for poor company.” The auburn-haired witch didn’t miss a beat. She finished the last of her drink, then nodded toward a collection of couches on the far side of the room. “Speaking of poor company. That’s your fiancé, isn’t it?”

Penelope didn’t look. “I’m sure it is.”

“I think that girl might still be at Hogwarts.”

A quick glance confirmed that her fiancé was indeed sitting too closely to a teenager, eating a strawberry delicately from her fingers. She averted her eyes again, further perturbed with Andromeda for drawing her attention to it. The other witch suddenly leaned in, the front of her magenta dress diving forward, and seized Penelope’s glass of elvish wine. She drained it before clinking it back down and placing her elbow on the counter so that she could both rest her head on it and incline into the searching look she was giving her. She was very close – surely closer than the chair had originally been.

Penelope was suspicious. “How are you, Andromeda?” The woman did not reply. The silence became awkward very quickly. “You have a daughter, right? What’s her name?”

The bartender moseyed by and was about to ask them something when the auburn-haired woman shoved Penelope’s empty glass at him. “She’ll have another one. And so will I. Be quicker than last time.”

The man sniffed in displeasure. Penelope was sympathetic to his indignation. She squinted at the godforsaken Black sister. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“No more than you.” The woman’s eyes both darkened and glimmered in a way that confused the Fawley heir.

Something was off. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Their drinks appeared again, which captured the auburn-haired witch’s attention momentarily.

“No one really knows what happened to you, and you’ve mostly stayed hidden, except for that thing with Alastair Moody. And I can’t imagine why you’d find yourself comfortable with this many purebloods in here.” Penelope raised her drink to her lips to shut herself up.

“I want to fuck,” Andromeda’s hand raised nonchalantly in the air before dropping to point at her. “ - you.” Those uncanny auburn eyes levelled at her.

Penelope choked on her drink, and she covered her mouth to try to hide it. “Excuse me?” 

“You heard me.”

“You are still… just like- the rest of your family, aren’t you?” Penelope unhappily struggled with her words.

“I don’t particularly care.”

The Fawley woman blinked rapidly while tonguing the inside of her cheek. “You’re married.” _Weak_

“You aren’t.” Andromeda cocked her head again toward Penelope’s fiancé. “Yeah, she’s definitely still at Hogwarts. I think she was a first year when I graduated. Jordana something…” 

“Shut up.” Penelope almost barked and finished her drink rather quickly. She felt like an idiot for considering saying yes. She also felt like an idiot for considering saying no.

“Come on, Fawley,” the woman rolled her eyes. “Don’t pass this up.” 

_Gods damn her. Gods damn herself too._

Absolutely everything about Andromeda Tonks was improper in that moment, and the Fawley family heir knew it. It worked, however, because it was Penelope who paid for their drinks, Penelope who apparated them to her own house, Penelope who undressed the overwhelmingly gorgeous witch, and Penelope who did most of the work to get her off. It was not, however, Penelope’s name that the woman unwillingly let escape her lips in a moment of passion.

Andromeda realized her mistake immediately and her pleasure was replaced with a flooding terror. Her wide, horrified eyes fixed on the woman beneath her. She was still bracing herself above Penelope, and her hair hung like a curtain around them, trapping them in the scandal and vulnerability of the moment.

Penelope welcome her longed-for triumph with glee. She quirked her lips into a sneer. “Oh no, Andromeda,” she chuckled lowly. “You are a sick, sick woman. Is that what all this is about?” She twirled two fingers in a pretentious gesture in the space between them.

The woman moved too quickly for her to react, snatching her fingers and pinning them roughly to the bed with unexpected strength and cut off Penelope’s cry of pain with a hand wrapped around her throat. She pressed hard; Penelope couldn’t swallow or breathe. Struggling only made the auburn-haired witch, so seductive just minutes ago, lean rage into her.

“You - are a fuck-faced _whore_ from a dead-end family. If you ever breath a word to anyone, anywhere, at any time, you will be sorry you lived past this moment,” Andromeda hissed. 

Penelope wasn’t sure she was going live past this moment anyway. Red, silver, and purple spots were beginning to swim in her vision around the woman’s face. 

“I will make sure everyone believes you killed your fiancé, and I will break your mind to make sure your memories and your jealousy match the crime.” 

The Fawley heir’s eyes widened in fear. She tried to shake her head, but the dark witch – _she had to be a dark witch, didn’t she?_ – tightened her grip around her neck. 

“Do you fucking understand me?” 

Penelope was pretty sure Andromeda was threatening to kill her fiancé, but that hardly mattered since she wasn’t sure the woman wasn’t going to kill her now if she didn’t agree. She sucked in a deep, scraping wheeze when the woman released her. The furious witch was out of the bed, dressed, and sweeping from the house before Penelope could gather herself. When she dared to look in the mirror, she saw fingerprints already beginning to bruise on her neck. She did her part, and carried Andromeda’s secret to her grave, long after Andromeda herself (and both of her sisters) died. Her fiancé, however, drowned in a boating accident shortly before their wedding, and she chose to never marry – which is how Neville Longbottom became the sole heir of both the Longbottom and Fawley houses.

**

The alarm for an incoming emergency patient echoed through St. Mungo’s halls, and Andromeda did a quick sweep through the office to see if word been sent ahead of them. Seeing nothing, she entered the main room in time to find Kingsley and a couple wide-eyed aurors fresh out of training levitating three people onto mobile beds at her interns’ directions.

“Muggles or wizards?” She snapped into the professional role she compartmentalized from the rest of her life.

Kingsley was out of breath. “Muggles. Another attack. Pretty bad one.”

“Are there others coming in?”

“Probably a few.”

“Life or limb?”

“Probably limb. These are the worst so far.”

Something caught the auburn-haired witch’s eye – something she didn’t want to be the one seeing. She bent over one of the delirious men and scraped her gloved fingers over something protruding from a shallow wound in his shoulder. With her thumb and forefinger, she carefully extracted a shard of some crystalline material. It crackled and crinkled with an unmistakable electric blue light – her older sister’s magic. Kingsley was talking, but her heartbeat grew loud enough in her ears to muffle his voice. She pushed one of the young aurors aside to inspect the next patient and found similar shards in both of his upper thighs and yet another in the forehead of the last one. The pieces pulsed in her palms as she stared at them. This was always the worst thing to treat.

“What happened?” She asked. The shards tremored, and she had a strange longing to try to arrange them into a pattern of something less awful.

“Not entirely sure. A squib in a little neighborhood near the London zoo set off an alarm when he saw Death Eaters apparate in.”

A fear she wanted to believe was irrational stabbed through her. “What neighborhood?” There was no immediate reply, and when she raised her head to see the man’s mouth hesitating to form words. “Kingsley, what fucking neighborhood?” 

He averted his gaze. “Chalk Farm area.” 

_Her sister-in-law’s. Dora was at the house for the weekend._ The stabbing fear ripped from her gut to her throat and drained the blood from her face. A tidal wave of silver and purple splashed over the waiting room and the front desk. She snapped at one of the mid-level healers to take over as she rushed to the office for her wand. A hurried patronus to Ted’s shop told him to meet her at his sister’s house immediately. Then she disapparated despite Kingsley’s attempts to reclaim her attention.

Ted responded quickly. He landed on the street in front of his sister’s house in time to see his wife sprinting up the steps and breaking into the front door without waiting for invitation. Plumes of smoke laced with green still billowed from a handful of houses kitty-corner from them on the next block over which the Dark Mark was beginning to form. He followed his wife into the building and found her swinging Dora up into her arms and already arguing with his sister, brother-in-law, and their son. Ted didn’t stop to convince them; he seized his sister and her husband while Andromeda grabbed their nephew. They apparated to their own house.

On the doorstep of the Tonks residence, Andromeda knelt and clasped her daughter to her chest, trying not to sob out loud. The seven-year old felt her mother’s heart pound into her and held her tenderly, despite not knowing what kind of thing could make her mother tremble so. The two muggle adults reeled with the dizziness of apparition while their son, apparently unaffected, surveyed his cousin’s and aunt’s embrace.

“What is – “ Ted’s brother-in-law was taking big gasps to control a wave of nausea. “What - is going on?”

Andromeda spoke with her eyes closed. “The terrorist attacks we’ve been talking about. That’s what the fires were.”

“How did you know?”

“Three muggles were brought into St. Mungo’s on emergency. Kings was with them.” She looked at Ted as gratefully as she could while he wrapped his arms around her and their daughter. His embrace was almost enough to quell her waning panic and rising anger.

Ted kissed Dora on the top of her head and said, “You all should stay here for a bit.”

“How long?” His sister was clearly having trouble processing the danger.

“Not sure yet. Maybe a day or two. Kings will let us know more soon.” This made the muggle adults trade incredulous looks.

Andromeda thought very little could make her feel worse about the situation until she saw a column of black smoke stream over her husband’s shoulder into the nearby meadow. It coalesced into a familiar figure with mussed curls, and she cursed straight into her daughter’s ear. 

“Fuck no. Fuck her.” 

Ted’s head drew back in surprise and alarm. His wife was always a terror when she used that tone of voice, and this time it had a new, deadly edge to it. 

She pushed Dora into him and straightened up, her wand already out. “Are the wards up?” 

“Yes.” He nodded. 

“Get everyone inside. If the wards break for anyone other than me, set them on fire and apparate everyone to the Forbidden Forest.” Ted didn’t think he could apparate four people anywhere, much less to the Forbidden Forest - a place he definitely didn’t want to take his family - and he sure as hell didn’t want to leave his wife behind in this state. When he tried to protest, she hissed, “Do as I fucking say.”

He scooped his daughter up, corralled the rest of the family inside, and locked the door behind them even though the precaution felt trivial. The children beelined to the window, where they smushed their noses and fingers up against the glass, feverish in their desire to see. Ted placed his hand on the window frame and peered out over their heads while the muggle adults gathered behind him. 

His wife had not yet touched the wards, but they were already shot through with a striking wash of pink, purple, blue, and red rippling up over the house – not unlike the way Dora’s hair had been morphing as of late. He stole a glance at his daughter. She was leaning forward on her toes, eyes wide, and mouth agape at her mother – and for good reason. Andromeda’s face was swarming with fury. Her purple and gold magic ricocheted like lightning off the wards. Her spine appeared to lengthen while her shoulders relaxed with an insidious confidence, and she locked hateful eyes on the woman approaching beyond the wards. _Was he afraid for or of his wife? Was that his own heavy breathing or his daughter’s?_ Andromeda muttered words he did not know, and a fountain of flames from her wand pierced the earth. It burned the grass and soil in a small radius around her and spread out in a single arc to encircle the house, creating a second layer parallel to the shimmering wards.

“Shouldn’t we leave, Ted?” His sister whispered harshly. She hadn’t seen the burning, the Dark Mark, or the carnage near her home, and this display from her sister-in-law exceeded what she could imagine about the attack.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “No. You heard her.” He couldn’t hold the suspicion in his sister’s voice against her. His wife did look quite the dark witch. “She knows what she’s doing.” 

“Are you sure we should trust her right now? This doesn’t look… safe or…”

“Every bit of me trusts her.” 

He felt his daughter shift in a way that told him this statement was important to her without understanding why. _Her mother - whispered about in public, tiptoed around by family and friends, confronted by Ministry workers at her own home; her mother, who sometimes made the house shake, who sometimes cried when she sang her to sleep, who sometimes slumped listlessly on the stairs; her mother, whom she still recognized now despite the flames, the boiling colors in the sky, the way she was carrying herself, the adults’ suspicion, the grand wickedness – she was someone to be trusted._

Ted returned his attention to the window because Dora grasped his hand and squeezed tightly. Andromeda strode through the turbulent wards and the circle of fire with no other care than to keep her loathing eyes on the other figure. The wards and the flames clung to her as she passed, whipping together in her wake, and ripping into wild tendrils when they freed themselves from her. 

Bellatrix’ wand was not out. She was still scuffed and sooty from the raid, where she’d arrived late to play cleanup for some young recruits who couldn’t yet handle themselves against aurors. The mission hadn’t been especially remarkable or successful, and she was pretty sure the raid was precariously near where the muggle Tonks’ lived. This was why she had apparated to the meadow near her middle sister’s house, a decision she was beginning to think she might regret as the woman advanced at her. 

Still, neither the turmoil of the Tonks wards nor the scorching fire put her off entirely. She was more nervous about how forcefully her sister was approaching. Other than the one time in the garden at the Lestrange lodge, the Andromeda she knew had never lashed out except when she was out of control, and Bellatrix wasn’t particularly ready to match her in either case. 

“Andy -“

“You fucking dare to come to my house after that?” The middle Black sister sliced her wand up from the ground, and chunks of earth flew at Bellatrix, who barely dodged them.

“Are they – are they ok?”

“You snake!” 

Bellatrix drew her wand and pulled up a shield just in time to send a spell ricocheting into the night. “I wasn’t there, Andy. If I’d have known – “

“Fuck you! I saw your fuck-ass magic buried in three muggles in St. Mungo’s.”

Bellatrix felt her composure breaking with the short-lived lie. “I - I’m sorry. Just hear me out.”

“Hell if I ever listen to you ever again!” Spells popped on the dark-haired witch’s shield, and a mounting wind tore at its edges as if at mere parchment.

“I didn’t have a choice. I was forced to. I did my best to keep it away from them.”

A string of expletives launched a barrage of colorful spells. The dark-haired witch had to dive out of the way and cast a new protego to hold back her sister’s anger. 

“Bullshit! Bullshit! You’re violent. You’re reckless. It never matters to you who you hurt as long as you get to hurt someone! You don’t care about anyone, anything, but yourself!”

Bellatrix would have flinched if she had been standing still, but she was still retreating from incoming arcs of sizzling purple and yellow. “I’m here right now because I care about you!”

“No, you’re here because you think you can have everything your way – playing your stupid, violent games and still having me care about you. But you can’t!”

“Give me a little bit of slack, Andromeda. We’re not so different! We’re both just doing our best to live with who we are!” She didn’t love feeling desperate, much less sounding desperate, and she sounded _very_ desperate.

“We are NOTHING alike! I was always too weak to actually stand up to you, but not anymore. I’m done with you and your shit. I’m done!”

“Ok, I crossed a line. I get it. I hear you. I’m listening.” The protego was taking an unusual amount of effort to keep in place.

“Go to hell! You directly put my family in immediate danger.”

Bellatrix’ voice sounded high on her sister’s wind as she tried to retrieve Ted’s words to her months earlier. “Your family _is_ my family, Andy!”

The auburn-haired witch’s lip curled. “No, they’re not. They never were, and they never will be.”

The oldest Black sister felt her throat constrict as she watched her sister disappearing behind a cold hatred. She made a last-ditch effort to provoke her back across the chasm growing between them. “You don’t mean that, and you’d regret it if you did! They’ll never mean as much to you as I do!”

It was the wrong provocation. The auburn-haired witch spun her wand above her head to cast a torrent of rage at her sister, and her voiced thundered. “If you ever come near my family or hurt anyone I care about ever again, if they don’t send you to Azkaban, I will come get you and kill you myself!”

Black flames erupted next to them, momentarily interrupting the deluge of magic. The Dark Lord emerged from them, wand already levelled at the middle Black sister. Bellatrix would always remember this moment as incredibly lengthy, though it couldn’t have been. Her sister’s wand remained pointed at her, but those burning auburn eyes fixed on the most powerful wizard in oral history, a wizard whom she had scorned and whose wand was now trained on her forehead. 

“Andromeda.” The man’s sneer was almost chivalrous.

The brazen woman was not so. “Tom.”

Her sister’s diminutive use of the Dark Lord’s old name shocked Bellatrix, but he gave no indication of offense. There was only cold magic amassing before him. She eyed the tip of his wand in her sister’s face nervously, then flicked her gaze between the two of them before making her third grave error that day, this time turning her wand on the Dark Lord.

“Bella, put your wand down.” The man’s voice slithered at her, but he cocked his head at the middle Black sister.

“M-my lord, y-you promised.” The dark witch cursed herself for stuttering.

“I said put your wand down.” 

For a moment, the three of them stood fixed in that triangle, each trapped by their own transgressions into pointing their wand at someone they did not actually want to be: the Dark Lord at the object of his unbreakable vow, Andromeda at her complicated sister, and Bellatrix at her mentor and lord. 

“Put it down.” An edge of annoyance at the dark witch’s delay sharpened the man’s voice; Bellatrix finally did as she was told. “I did promise, that is correct. Lucky for both of you, I am a benevolent lord, and I deign to keep even the stupidest of my promises.”

Andromeda’s eyes pulsed with an array of hot emotions. She swung her wand away from her sister to train it on the man. This didn’t relieve Bellatrix. The man, however, was unphased. He lowered his own wand while striding towards the dark-haired witch and wrapped a cloak of thick smoke around her. They disappeared in another eruption of black flames. 

Andromeda was left alone with her ire, and though it was already seeded with regret, it wouldn’t wane in time to fix things before Bellatrix was incarcerated.

**

They heard about the Potters before they heard about the Longbottoms; everyone did. Andromeda put Nymphadora to bed early and sang her a halting song until the girl was at least pretending to be asleep and then withdrew back downstairs to find Ted on the couch, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He hadn’t cleaned up after work; neither had she. When she curled up next to him, they sat in salty tears, cloying sawdust, the smell of sanitizing spray, bile on her shoes, sweat-heavy robes, and dirt that came from some unknown place. Even her magic picked up an unfamiliar smell as it cycled through colors unusual for her and crept over them both slowly, only subsiding when she repeatedly batted it away with her hand.

At some point, Ted flipped on the television and absentmindedly found a channel playing something trivial just for the noise. Neither of them watched or listened; neither did they speak. What was there to say? Their friends were dead; so was the Dark Lord. Who could celebrate? Who wouldn’t be relieved? It was terrible; it was good for Wizarding Britain. The weight of moral contradiction descended on them, as well as the weight of knowing that most people wouldn’t dwell on that contradiction if they noticed it at all.

Andromeda’s blank stare broke. “We should take Harry.” Ted blinked in surprise but said nothing. “They would have taken Dora if it had been us.”

This was true, but Ted resisted. “Dumbledore has him. He’s planning on sending him to Lily’s sister’s family.”

The woman gave a frustrated sigh. “I remember Lily saying her sister wasn’t exactly kind to her about being a witch.”

“It’s good for him to be with family.”

“It’s not good for him to be with family if they treat him poorly.”

Ted heard his wife’s own pain and dropped his head. “Andy, we can’t take him.”

“Why not? It’s the right thing to do.”

“No. We can’t. You know we can’t.” 

The auburn-haired witch’s jaw trembled, and she shifted uncomfortably. “He needs a family who understands and who will help him know who he is, who his parents were.”

“He needs stability.” The man’s words were sharper than he wanted them to be. “He needs stable adults. We can’t give him that right now.”

She snatched herself away. “We are that!”

“Two of them. You know it’s true.”

Her husband looked about as miserable as she remembered ever seeing him, but that didn’t matter to her. “You fucking asshole. I can’t believe you just said that.” 

He sighed. “He will be safe with Petunia’s family. He’ll be ok.”

“Fuck you!” 

She stormed out into the night. He was right, and she knew it. She could hardly parent one child with the way things were going those days, and she’d be damned – she was certain – if she tried and failed to care for another one.

**

The day the Daily Prophet featured a front-page photo of the Bellatrix screaming about the Dark Lord’s return and a report on her delivery to Azkaban, Andromeda disappeared for a week. When Ted finally found her in a muggle hospital bed, she was covered in dirt and the sour odor of beer and sweat. In a few weeks, St. Mungo’s let her go, only to re-hire her within the year once she had learned to hide her intoxication well enough to do her job effectively again. After that, it was the worst right before Dora went to Hogwarts, a time during which Ted made hundreds of excuses for his wife’s behavior and absences from social events and spent late nights listening to her ramble about her wretched feelings for her older sister. Once Dora was at school, he convinced her to enroll in a muggle outpatient rehab program, and slowly but surely her tempests quieted. She learned to speak of her sisters as one speaks of dead, beloved relatives, and she and Ted regained some sense of normalcy from that. By the time Dora graduated from Hogwarts, Andromeda had been promoted to Head Healer and was well on her way to running all of St. Mungo’s. Most people forgot about her addiction and forgave her past indiscretions, and her old reputation of dubious character was replaced with one of forbearance, kindness, and wisdom. She was the perfect pureblood – the one that reminded the wizarding world of the mystery and glory of ancient magic while also moving forward with progressive society to include muggleborn witches and wizards. She stayed away from the public eye as well as people and situations that would provoke her, and she garnered the quiet respect of those who were still skeptical of her and those who were enamored with her – both of which were many.

She found ways to be someone she wanted to be, even if she was not her full self all the time. The feeling of magic scratching at her skin as if at prison walls didn’t fade, but she achieved some homeostasis that let her ignore it most of the time. If she let herself think about it, she genuinely believed it would someday kill her, but that day was never today, and she was willing to go on living like this forever.


	16. The False Impression that Stories End

“Dumbledore is reconvening the Order.” 

Ted looked up from the lathe at this best friend. Kingsley’s hands were in his pockets, and he was leaning against the workbench. 

“It’s an overreaction, Kings. He lets Harry Potter’s situation get to him - especially ever since Harry’s story about the Tri-Wizard tournament.”

“There was an attack on a muggle neighborhood northwest of here yesterday.”

It was not a good feeling that sunk into Ted’s chest, but denial still seemed like the best option. “A common crazed radical going on a muggle killing spree is awful, Kings, but it’s not anywhere close to the full-scale attacks that happened before he was killed.”

Kingsley sighed and looked at the ceiling and floor and back again before locking his gaze on the other man. “I was there, Ted.” 

The carpenter drummed his fingers on the lathe, waiting for his friend to continue. His best option was beginning to seem like it was no longer an option.

“The Lestranges were there. All of them. And Rowle. Dolohov.”

Ted’s shoulders stiffened. “That’s not possible.”

“Apparently security was breached in Azkaban eight days ago. They didn’t tell us ‘til this morning.”

“Eight days ago?” Ted rubbed the back of his hand across his stubble. Kingsley nodded grimly. Ted snagged a rag to wipe stray grease from his hands. “Still, it surely it couldn’t be them. Over a decade in Azkaban would leave them rotting. The guards don’t even last that long.”

“That’s the thing – they were so…. strong. And they looked just like I remember them. Like they haven’t aged a bit.”

“So it’s someone else. Using some sort of aged Polyjuice or some new spell or something.

“Ted, Bellatrix waltzed straight through a blaze of spells, snatched one of my aurors’ wands right out of his hand, and crucio’d him with it until she disapparated when our woven phalanx spell broke over her. No one impersonating her could pull off that stunt the way she did.”

Ted finally met his friends’ eyes. “So you think it’s really happening.”

“I know it is. The Order is meeting tonight.”

“Seriously? Don’t you remember what happened last time? If the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord are really back, you’re giving yourselves a death sentence.”

“It’s the right thing to do.” 

Ted shook his head at his friend’s words. “What’re you here for?”

Kingsley took a deep breath. “To ask if you and Andromeda will join us.”

Ted closed his eyes. “You know what she thinks about the Order.”

“But maybe things have changed for her. She’s pretty different now.”

“Not in that way.”

“Having her could change everything for us, Ted.”

“She won’t do it, and I won’t ask her.”

“You, then.”

“I can’t do that to her.”

Kingsley spat on the ground. His spittle globbed up in the sawdust. “You know, man? I’ve always liked Andromeda – even when she was rather disreputable. But she’s rubbed off on you in the wrong ways.” Ted shifted his jaw and straightened his spine. That he said nothing irked Kingsley, so the auror barreled ahead. “It’s people who don’t step up who are going to fuck it all up; people who think they don’t have to choose a side. You didn’t use to be like that.”

Ted shook his head again. “You know I’ll fight alongside you - if it comes to it. But that’s totally different than provoking the beast.”

“The beast is already provoked! Are you and Andromeda really going to just stand by while others die for you?”

“I already told you what I’ll do. And she’s done enough.”

“Enough? She’s done as little as she could get away with. After all these years, she still can’t commit to the Good side. It’s time for her to pull her weight.”

“She’s not going to fight against her family. You know that.”

“She’s not going to fight against Bellatrix, you mean. Peculiar, those two.” Kingsley eyed his friend, waiting for a reaction. Ted didn’t give him one. “Bellatrix holds Andromeda back, and Andromeda holds you back. Shameful, isn’t it? To stand by and watch the world burn.”

Ted erupted, at least as much as his calm spirit could. “If the Dark Lord wins, then muggles and muggleborns – especially those who fought against him – are going to get destroyed. But if the Order wins, the Death Eaters and the old pureblood families are going to get destroyed. A whole bunch of people are going to be fucked either way. But the whole wizarding world isn’t going to burn down in either case. And that’s because of the people in the middle who keep living their lives despite whatever comes next.” Kingsley furrowed his brow. “And, Kings, it’s Andromeda and what she’s doing that’s going to make that possible. Her only goal has always been to heal people, to help them keep living, and that is what’s going to keep our world going. So leave her alone, because you and the Order and the Good side don’t have a wizarding world to save without what she’s doing.”

Kingsley chewed on the inside of his cheek, considering his friend’s perspective. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” he said finally.

“You’re good, man, and I love you to death. Just don’t forget that not everyone can be like you.”

The auror puffed out his cheeks and nodded reluctantly. “Your daughter is already asking to join the Order.”

Ted shook his head. “Don’t let her – at least not yet. Her mother will have a cow and will probably actually try to kill me over it.”

“Merlin, you lot are a riot.” The men both grinned at the easing tension. “I think your greatest vice was marrying into that family.”

“That’s probably true.”

Despite everything, Kingsley let himself chuckle before turning to leave. “Please let me know if you change your mind.

Ted let his friend get to the door before he called out, “Be careful, Kings.”

Ted had trouble concentrating on his work the rest of the day, plagued with thoughts about Death Eaters, the fucking Ministry, his wife, his daughter, his friends, and everything related to them. He was especially not looking forward to Andromeda finding out about the Azkaban breakout and fretted over how to deliver the news to her. After a few unproductive hours, he decided to call it quits early and head home.

He could hear water running in the kitchen as soon as he stepped from the floo into the house. He drew a couple deep breaths before heading towards the sound, deciding that now was as good a time as any to break the news. Just before he rounded the corner to the dining room, however, a heavy flapping came from the front of the house and he turned just in time to duck a belligerent owl that had squeezed in through the partially open window.

“Ted?” His wife’s voice called from over the sound of the running water. “Is that you? Oh!”

He didn’t bother explaining the owl, because once he wound his way around the table and chairs and placed his hand on the doorframe to peer into the kitchen, Andromeda was untying a small letter from its leg. It soared back past him – he had to dodge it again - and presumably back out of the house the way it came.

“Did this come with you?” She brushed behind her ear a stray, wavy lock that had fallen out of the clip that held her hair out of her face.

He shook his head, a little bit disgruntled about being derailed from his goal. “Kind of odd that it came in through the front window, though. Not the back porch.” 

Andromeda stared at the top fold of the parchment before furrowing her brow. The sink was almost full, but she made no move to shut off the faucet while she turned the letter over in her hands. “Andromeda _Black_ Tonks…? No one’s called me that in years.”

The water lapped at the top edges of the sink, and Ted knew – _he knew_ – he wanted to delay whatever was coming next. “Andy, maybe not right now?”

But she was opening it and reading it. Her eyes widened and mouth dropped open in surprise in a way that would have been attractive in any other circumstance, but Ted knew better. The sink overflowed. Andromeda leaned forward to brace herself on either side of the sink, letter clutched in her left hand, and still made no move to turn off the faucet.

“Andy?” Worry clumped in his throat. The water pouring down the cabinets onto the floor was sparkling and beginning to turn pink.

“I’ve been doing well, haven’t I, Ted?” Her gaze fixed on a spot somewhere beyond the counter; her lower lip trembled.

His heart plummeted at that old anxiety rising in her voice as he prepared to deal with something he hadn’t in years. “Andy?” The water pooling on the kitchen floor was now swirling with bright silver and red.

“I was doing so well.”

He gently approached her, turned her quivering hand upward, and uncurled her fingers to release the letter. He looked at her for permission to read it. When she didn’t protest, he flattened the parchment and immediately recognized the graceful, looping cursive.

_I’m out, baby girl. Are you coming to get me?  
-Bella-_

The house began to tremble, and it was never truly still again – not until Penelope Fawley found Andromeda dead in the hallway all those years later.

****

** ** **  
** ** **  
** ** ** 

****

“…and?”

****

“And what?” The storyteller prompts the woman across from him. Now that it is fully nighttime, their long shadows in the streetlights have replaced that of the nearby steeple.

****

“That’s not the end.”

****

“Well, no.”

****

The asker looks at him expectantly as he discerns what to give her. He starts to speak again.

****

“Truthfully, Andromeda did manage well enough after that, outside of a few instances where her darkness flexed itself violently. Even when her husband and daughter died, even when Bellatrix waltzed back into her life, even when the Black family empire rose again, and even when Bellatrix and Hermione Granger fell in love, she maintained steadiness and sturdiness that her younger self would have killed to have. Ted was the only one who had articulated her core question, and since he kept it to himself, it died with him at the Battle of Hogwarts: _Did it matter that Andromeda was fundamentally a dark witch if in fact it was she that kept alive the Light?_ Her sisters, though they didn’t know the question, were the only other ones besides Ted who had its answer, so after Death took Narcissa, there was no one left to give witness to it.”

****

The storyteller stops again, but the asker doesn’t look satisfied. She says, “That’s not really the end.”

****

“Well, no, of course not. We’re sitting in front of St. Andrea’s Catholic Church.”

****

“You’re trying to tell me that the Roman Catholic Church sainted a witch – an arrogant, dark witch who was in love with her own sister.”

****

“I don’t think it happened so directly. Beatification and canonization take a long time – long enough for stories and miracles to change enough to obscure certain facts. But, yes, that is essentially what happened.”

****

The asker is the one who sighs this time. “It is easier for me to accept that story about the Boy Who Lived and the Dark Lord.”

****

“The Dark Lord.” The storyteller chuckles and stretches his hands behind his head.

****

“What?”

****

“You call him the Dark Lord. Most people would call him Voldemort.”

****

“I guess I just got used to you saying it in the story.”

****

“That’s because that’s what Andromeda called him.”

****

“Where did you find all this out anyway?”

****

“Dark corners of libraries and the old wizarding museum and that weird district between Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. And some other places.”

****

“Be more specific. I’m not going to believe it unless there are credible sources.”

****

The storyteller gives her a sad smile. “More evidence isn’t going to make you believe it. You have the stories, you’ve been to the museum, you’ve walked up and down Tonks Streets in London, Moscow, and New York, you lurk by this church, the invitation to the Northern University of Witchcraft and Wizardry that’s in the old Black Manor is sitting on your kitchen table. If you won’t believe it now, more evidence is not going to convince you.”

****

The asker looks as if she will try to argue with this, but she fails. “Why is it so important?”

****

“Are you asking yourself or me?”

****

A frustrated growl leaves the asker’s lips as she rubs her face. “Honestly? If I’m going to enter the Wizarding World, I want to know I’m not in danger of becoming a dark witch.”

****

The storyteller’s grey-blue eyes soften at the woman’s sudden candor. “Perhaps you’re just as in danger of becoming a good witch.”

****

The asker’s cheeks puff out as she exhales through pursed lips, almost glowering at the man across from her. “And you? Why did you go through all the effort to unearth her story? Her _legend_?”

****

He honors his candor with his own. “Because those of us who want to be good must tell each other stories of the truly good.”

****

“But she’s not good! Almost nothing you told me today is about her being good – quite the opposite.”

****

“It’s not about _being_.”

****

“Then what’s it about?”

****

“It’s about the loving – loving goodness. And no one in the history of Wizarding Britain has loved goodness as much as Andromeda Tonks. No matter what she was. No matter what she _is_.”

****

“She didn’t love goodness! She hated the Order of the Phoenix!”

****

The storyteller lets out a frustrated sigh. “Not capital ‘G’ Goodness, not the ideal of Goodness. You know what I mean.”

****

The asker doesn’t back down just yet. “And you can’t tell me – if we are on the subject of wizarding legends – that Harry Potter didn’t love Goodness more than she did. He’s practically the most traditionally good, flat character that has ever existed in any story ever; it’s almost nauseating.”

****

“Harry Potter didn’t have to give up anything to love goodness.”

****

“His parents were killed by the Dark Lord.”

****

“Before he knew what goodness and darkness were. Andromeda lost everything because she wanted goodness more than she wanted darkness.”

****

“And again here we are pitting Good and Bad against one another.”

****

“Not exactly. If you recall, right before the end it was Hermione that helped her finally see that her goodness could love her darkness too. That’s what Bellatrix had unsuccessfully tried forever to show her.”

****

“ _Did_ she actually see that, though?”

****

“I believe that she did.”

****

“But it gained her nothing in the end anyway. She died alone and unceremoniously.”

****

“So what?”

****

“Because inspiring stories about great people don’t end like that. They end with fanfare and glory – or at least a wonderful tragedy – if you actually want them to have an effect on people.”

****

“But if it’s a true story then it’s exactly what you should expect. And it’s what you should tell if you’re going to do her justice. It makes her life and her memory no less great. I think you need to interrogate yourself as to why you have such a problem with it.”

****

“Because it’s not fair! She deserved more than that!”

****

“Deserving is nothing.”

****

The asker blinks slowly, thinking hard. “You’ve said that before.”

****

“Nope, that was Hermione Granger. But it’s true. Let her greatness and her averageness coexist. She wanted that. Let her at least have that.”

****

The asker purses her lips again in crumbling resolve. She reluctantly pulls a deeply mahogany wand from her pocket and, with her wrists on the table, rolls it back and forth gently in her fingertips. She presses her tongue to the roof her mouth. The storyteller can see her quiver with the kelpie hair core, and he wishes mightily that for just once he could see magic in color like the witches and wizards of old.

****

Their evening ends when the streetlight flickers out. They part ways with a smile and nod – the asker to her precious fears and the storyteller to the hopes he tends, all overhung by that grand, grand wickedness.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the storyteller/asker bit at the end confuses you, go back and check the edits I made to chapter 1.
> 
> The quote about those who want to be good telling each other stories of the truly good is borrowed from Araminta Stone Johnson in _And One Was a Priest: The Life and Times of Duncan M. Gray, Jr._
> 
> If you've gotten this far, thanks and congrats. Take care out there.
> 
> **never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just playing in it.**


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